[Web4lib] Media Hosting Options - Recommendations?

[Cary Gordon]

You might want to consider Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) <http://aws.amazon.com/s3 
 > for your media. It is not free, but I think that there is no way  
that you can host this in a high performance environment for anything  
close to what they charge. There is even an inexpensive ($20) front  
end called JungleDisk <http://www.jungledisk.com/> that you can use to  
manage your files.

I think that many potential users are intimidated by the S3 pricing  
model and have been put off by the perception that you need to be a  
developer to use it. JungleDisk helps solve the latter, and a little  
time doing projections will show that you can't really beat the price.

Don McAskill of the SmugMug photo hosting site estimated that he saved  
about $25k/month over what he was paying for storage in a datacenter.  
While most libraries aren't in the $70k/year storage costs range that  
they had, the savings are bigger at lower levels.

Cary Gordon
The Cherry Hill Company
http://www.chillco.com




On Jul 1, 2008, at 4:49 PM, Houghton-Jan, Sarah wrote:

> Hi!
>
>
>
> Our library is looking at the cost/benefit issues related to hosting  
> media
> in-house vs. hosting it externally with a free or paid service.  We  
> are
> exploring the various options out there (e.g. YouTube for videos),  
> but are
> wondering if any of the wonderful web librarians out there have had  
> this
> experience themselves.  We're worried that the cost of upping our  
> bandwidth
> in order to adequately host multimedia will cost more than we can  
> afford, or
> more than the benefit it will afford us.  Hosting on outside sites,  
> though,
> carries its own risks such as a lack of reliable data archiving,  
> possible
> ads, lack of branding, etc.
>
>
>
> So, if you've hosted multimedia at your library internally, please  
> tell us
> how that's going.  And if you've hosted it externally, please let us  
> know
> that as well, including any data you have on the cost, storage limits,
> bandwidth limits, terms of agreement and privacy issues, ads, and so  
> forth.
>
>
>
>
> Any information is appreciated - so don't hold back!
>
> Sarah Houghton-Jan
>
> Digital Futures Manager, San José Public Library