Fewer Islands of Storage and More Slippers!

-- Fewer Islands of Storage and More Slippers!

Whenever we visit new prospects we see the same problems time and time again. Whether they be banks, broadcasters, post-production facilities or telecoms companies, they face similar technical challenges when ingesting, curating, protecting and sharing video assets.

Speaking with the CTO and the CFO about their challenges is fantastic for getting the strategic view on the business, but it is only when you pay a visit to the MCR or server room, with the engineers, do you get a grasp how much work goes on behind the scenes to get production done.

These days the broadcast or post production engineer has to be a Jack and Jill of all trades, an ingest expert, a networking ninja, and, sometimes an actual firefighter. Due to an explosion in content creation, and rapid technology change, the engineer's life is far from 9-5. However, some of the tasks that take so much time out of the engineer's day are entirely avoidable.

One such task is managing islands of storage that have accumulated in the server room over a period of time. A typical tour of a data/server room goes like this:

Much of the above has come from actual conversations with hundreds of engineers from Cardiff to Rio (in France, one engineer referred to his cheap storage as stockage de merde', what can I say, the customer is always right)!

From all of those conversations it is clear that they all face many of the same problems:

Finding content when the creative teams cannot lay their hands on it. Difficult when content is dispersed across pools of storage that are not always connected to the network.

Media Management. Moving content between silos of storage to make room for new projects.

Ingesting content in a myriad of formats and transforming it to a common format.

The move to IP workflows is great news but sadly no-one told the broadcast racks to grow a couple of inches to accommodate IT standard hardware. The result is server Tetris. Also, IP workflows need, well, IP ports. So while balancing 2u servers on top of milk crates, network cables are being spaghetti across multiple rooms to a switch, with not enough network ports.

Working in high-stress environments for long hours with often fewer resources due to ever increasing pressures on the bottom line.

Never having time to work on higher value functions that will bring efficiencies or generate revenue for the business.

What the CTO and CFO want and need is valued staff adding value to the business by working on those higher value functions'. The industry is slowly realising that the buy cheap buy twice model is broken and that in order to implement strategic business goals, investment is needed. Investment, not only in technology that is integrated into the companies infrastructure but also automates the many tasks current carried out manually.

Consolidating those many islands of storage into a scalable, management free private cloud built on object storage, like MatrixStore, will free up staff to work on tasks that generate revenue. MatrixStore is a proven multi-tenancy platform that supports multiple creative workflows and process. It's the storage geek, so your staff doesn't have to be. As well as automating tasks and bringing efficiencies, it enables engineers to leave the office on time for once! Oh, and you get a free pair of slippers. Who can ask for more?

If you would like to learn how Object Matrix is trusted by the world's largest broadcasters, banks, and post-production companies to protect their assets with MatrixStore object storage please do get in touch.

LINK:	http://object-matrix.com/fewer-islands-of-storage-and-more-slippers/...
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