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This Week at the Q

CMMA Blog

Welcome to our new weekly blog, ‘This Week at the Q’!

Every Friday, I close out my week by sending a ‘Top 5’ company email. It’s really a great way to wrap up the week, and share the latest in what’s new at the Q. For a while, I wasn’t sure how many people actually read it, until one week when I was offline and didn’t send it, people from all over the company emailed asking where it was! After confessing I was a slacker that week, it got me thinking; maybe our customer community would enjoy our news tidbits just as much. So let’s give this a shot. Leave a comment if you’re reading, I’d love to hear from you!

  1. We were excited when Jessica Iler recently joined our Product Marketing team, bringing a wealth of storage experience from her work both vendor and analyst side. As we’ve had to become more physically distanced, Jessica has been a passionate supporter of technology that enables us to be more connected than ever. Read more in her new TV Technology byline, Making Remote Production the New Norm , where Jessica discusses today’s remote production environment and the effects on workflows and creative teams. The article includes some tips on how to keep these remote workflows in motion and optimize collaboration and productivity.
  2. Following on from that, and getting a little more technical, Everett Ward from our Tech Marketing team posted this new blog Tips for Remote Workflow Operations .
  3. Rounding out the remote trifecta, Diana Salazar from our Product Marketing team posted her new blog, Crisis Management Strategies for Your Remote Workforce . Diana has spent quite a bit of time speaking with not only our customers, but also our own Quantum IT team to understand the biggest pain points as we moved to a remote workforce. We all have an enormous amount of respect for our IT heroes working day and night to ensure we can work securely and keep moving forwards during this challenging time. You’ve pulled us together, and kept us connected.
  4. If you’re a StorNext® customer, we have a new white paper covering TISAX certification . In many industries, our customers must securely share sensitive information across corporate boundaries and be assured that it is always protected. Requiring all parties to demonstrate compliance with a specific set of information, security standards are one way to achieve this goal. TISAX is one such standard, developed specifically by the auto industry, but addressing concerns commonly found in other infosec standards. If you’re a StorNext customer subject to information security standards compliance, you may find this Quantum StorNext Security white paper interesting.
  5. All of the sessions from our recent VirtualQ | Protect & Archive digital event, are now available on-demand here . Tune in to hear Quantum and our partners discuss strategies for processing, storing and protecting massive volumes of critical enterprise data. 80% of the world’s data will be unstructured by 2025, and we’re addressing those challenges head-on to support this massive data growth and archive your most valuable data. Interested in a topic we didn’t cover at the event? Drop me a note and we’ll add it to the line-up!

I look forward to sharing our top 5 news bytes again next week,

Natasha

To view our Partner blog, click here

Our New “Remote” World

CMMA Blog

As always, I want to begin by expressing my sincerest wishes that this blog finds you all well. Very likely you are working remotely, like me. Like most. It’s our new world. In fact, recently we held our first very large virtual event, VirtualQ | NAB . It was focused on the Media and Entertainment industry with special interest for our Broadcast and Post-Production customers. Hopefully, you were able to attend one of the many sessions we offered over this 3-day event, which included discussions with technology Partners like Adobe , Dalet , IPV , and Teradici . If you missed any of these sessions, you can still check them out here . We were thrilled to have them share updates on their offerings, especially as they relate to new workflows that have now become intrinsic with remote collaboration, a change that has become more prevalent and is likely here to stay.

To me, this was the most recurring and central theme to what people were both talking and asking about. We also heard that at the beginning of our “remote-work” world, there was an initial scramble by companies who found their teams scattered and isolated from each other, who still required access to shared media resources to meet business objectives. The initial frenzy has mostly come and gone. Many studio and media production companies have adjusted by using new methods to access and share content, distribute it, and keep the entire workflow moving in order to maintain business continuity and monetize the final product.

I was lucky enough to speak with the following 4 partners during our event, and throughout I heard the constant theme of facilitating workflows and production in this new era of home studios and remote media projects. Here are a few of my takeaways that underscore this, and the new world of remote collaboration.

Adobe presented Productions in Premiere Pro that provides users the tools for organizing collaborative workflows and film projects. Productions was demonstrated with a virtual desktop interface and showed how remote users can access local storage, like StorNext , for shared project workflows.

Dalet shared how distributed resources, teams, and audiences are everywhere now. Cumulatively, this has necessitated the ability for remote creatives to take advantage of their offerings, which include cloud and hybrid cloud content access to maintain uninterrupted productivity.

We also heard how IPV is helping facilitate workflow and productivity in today’s world that’s relying on remote access like never before. IPV’s Curator provides the ability to ‘collaborate without borders’, enabling ongoing creative work from anywhere in the world.

Teradici provided us with a demonstration that showed how remote users, in your own home studio, for instance, can seamlessly maintain business continuity with ongoing access to workstations and applications. This is especially valuable for scenarios when moving everything to the cloud isn’t feasible, yet remote teams need ongoing access to shared assets to complete projects and meet deadlines.

It was truly exciting to hear how these partners are advancing technologies to facilitate and create new remote workflows and keep decentralized operations connected and productive. During our sessions, we heard that for the most part, the M&E industry has rapidly adjusted, with editors, colorists, producers, and collaborative workgroups working remotely and continuing production in “the new normal.” In fact, many already believe that remote workflows will continue, and with new resulting advantages. We’ll look at those in another blog, though.

The next step, of course, is to drill down into these new media workflows , and see the architecture, what capabilities users will have, and the simplicity to integrate these new methods into your own workflow. For these details, I invite you to stay tuned for the upcoming blog by my colleague, Everett Ward, where he’ll cover these workflows from a more technical perspective. Until my next blog, stay safe, happy, and healthy!

To view our Partner blog, click here

Quantum’s VirtualQ | NAB – Take Your Content in Bold New Directions

CMMA Blog

First of all, we at Quantum want to say we miss interacting with you personally, whether providing demos , tours, direct access with our executives at our Executive Briefing Center in our Englewood CO office, visiting onsite to understand your environment and challenges first-hand, or simply having really good conversations during any of the events we both attend, we are all adjusting to new ways. With that said, we are still conducting all these customer-focused activities, but more creatively, virtually. 

And to underscore the core aspect, which hasn’t changed over these recent times of adjustment, is our commitment to our customers and finding new means to continue our interaction, and solving the challenges to keep your production rolling along. 

We might not have made our annual trip to Vegas this year for NAB to sit across from each other at the same table to talk about what’s new, but we can still have meaningful conversations and learning forums face-to-face, virtually that is!

Beginning next Tuesday, May 12 – 14, we are thrilled to welcome you back to the Quantum booth, specifically to our VirtualQ | N AB !

As always, Quantum executives and business leaders will be participating in break-out customer meetings to have personal roundtable discussions. We’ll also be showcasing many of our advanced technologies with product updates and an impressive lineup of leading technology Partners whose time-relevant solutions work seamlessly with StorNext ® environments. Listed below are the sessions where you can join from the comfort of your own home office to hear directly from these Quantum Technology Alliances Partners on how they are providing innovative methods to keep your workflows in motion in our “new normal” world.

  • Adobe Premier Productions with StorNext
    • Learn more about Adobe Premiere Pro as we highlight its new Productions feature and the ways to configure StorNext to get the most out of this new capability.
  • Orchestrated Media Solutions with Dalet and StorNext
    • Find out how Dalet’s solutions provide access across tiered-storage systems along with transparent Archive content access for quicker restores and faster time-to-air.
  • Remote Collaborative Production with IPV and StorNext
    • Hear how IPV helps efficiently manage today’s fast-moving collaborative media workflows and creative projects for today’s distributed workstation environments.
  • Options and Considerations for Effective Remote Production with Teradici and StorNext
    • Discover how Teradici enables work from home needs with remote technology to create secure virtual workspaces handling even the most graphics-intensive applications.

If you would like to learn more about these solutions and how they can help keep your production environment in motion, please visit our VirtualQ | NAB Event web page to check out our event agenda and register for the sessions that interest you. Also, if you would like to connect directly with Quantum executives, product leadership, and engineering experts, please let us know , and we’ll be happy to arrange a meeting with you. See you virtually next weekat VirtualQ | NAB!

To view our Partner blog, click here

Tips and Best Practices for Remote Media Production and Post-Production

CMMA Blog

To our valued customers, we know this pandemic is affecting everyone on both a personal and professional level.  We have been working closely with partners to enable editors and producers to do their work remotely, and we’d like to share some of the practices we are seeing, below.

If you would like to learn more or if you need assistance, please contact us so we can help.  We will continue to stay in touch during this difficult time.

Options and Best Practices for Enabling Remote Post-Production

There are several options for enabling remote production, but the most common practice we are seeing is to leverage virtual and/or remote desktop technology to give content creators access to their shared storage environment remotely. 

In this architecture, our customers leverage their workstations and shared storage environment that is in place at the studio or post-house.  These workstations are connected to the high-performance shared storage environment via a StorNext file system client, or a standard CIFS or NFS client.  For our existing customers, this entire infrastructure is in place today. 

Virtual desktop and/or remote desktop technology is then used to enable remote access to these high-performance workstations.  From the user’s perspective, the experience of work on an ‘endpoint’ computer at their home is the same as if they were working at their workstation at the studio.  There are different technology options, and Quantum and our partners will consult with customers to determine the right architecture, and work with customers to deploy the remote desktop infrastructure using the best options and architecture for their needs. 

Benefits

This approach has the benefits of leveraging the existing storage infrastructure in place today and doesn’t require that the data be moved.  It can be implemented very quickly, with some of our customers enabling hundreds of editors in the span of just a couple of weeks.

Remote Production Session at Virtual Q | NAB

If you are interested in learning more, please register for our session on enabling remote production as part of our Virtual Q | NAB Event, taking place May 12th through 14th.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Re-Runs Are More than Entertaining, They’re Advanced Technologies in Motion

CMMA Blog

Wow, it’s been a long time, but over the weekend, I was able to watch the Denver Broncos win Super Bowl XXXIII – again! You guessed it, I’m located in Colorado, USA, and fan of our local NFL team! I was able to hear John Madden’s funny commentary, see Shannon Sharpe, Terrell Davis, Ed McCaffrey, and of course, John Elway out on the field reclaiming the Vince Lombardi trophy – again! So many names I hadn’t heard for many years. It really was enjoyable to watch that re-run. And there are many others that Broadcasters are sharing with us from their video archives, since most new production filming and events are currently on “pause.”  The choices available to us are not limited to only those legendary sporting match-ups and show-downs that never get old to watch, like Schumacher’s last F1 race win, or 1985’s thrilling NCAA Tournament with Villanova upsetting Georgetown, or Nadal’s win over Federer at Wimbledon in 2008. There is also the slew of culture-impacting 90’s sitcoms, classic films from over the decades, and binge-worthy streaming programs making the options available to us almost endless.

Giving due deference and solemn acknowledgment to the world today, and global efforts to continue onward while caring for each other, we also need to feed our souls and seek forms of entertainment to do that. Enter television and movies. Enjoying forms of digital “art” have been a mainstay of modern-day culture thanks to all the technologies behind the scenes. It takes more than pushing “the clicker”!

After the filming and creation of video content, this imagery, or digital media files, must be moved to secure storage, which can later be accessed for playout as future uses of these assets. This is not accomplished “automagically,” and requires a file system that is tuned for video and video-like files. 

In more complex environments that support HD broadcasts and multi-platform distribution, StorNext end-to-end content workflow management software and storage appliances are the key to bringing these assets to life, to our screens. 

Broadcasters require this level of an integrated storage infrastructure to support their specific tools, while also facilitating sharing between dispersed groups and providing dependable high-speed transfer rates to prevent any interruption to the media workflow system.

Today, StorNext High-Performance File Storage is the de facto standard for storing, serving, and sharing video and video-like content. For the highest performance gains, StorNext‘s client software allows the shared file system to appear local, not as a remote NAS, which is especially beneficial for large files and streams – like video. Today, shared storage is a requirement for collaboration and workflow enablement. Designed with patented and Emmy-winning technologies, StorNext reduces latencies, promotes broader collaboration, and improves efficiencies to ultimately deliver high-quality content that we’ve all come to expect in our daily lives. 

So as you take a break from your day and escape with a funny video on Social Media, laugh at an old movie from the ‘70s, or in early May, watch Secretariat pull off a heart-pounding win at the Kentucky Derby (1977 that is), remember that these re-runs are a technological effort by many, and rely on world-class technologies like StorNext by Quantum. Enjoy!

To view our Partner blog, click here

StorNext: A Product with History

CMMA Blog

I’ve got a 1999 Subaru Forester.  I love that car, probably a little too much.  Last year one of my friends bought a 2019 Forester.  My first experience with that thing was eye-opening, let me tell you.  It was like getting a ride in an alien spaceship.  The 2019 is bigger, heavier, packed to the gills with technology (and airbags), and yet gets better gas mileage than mine ever did.  The words “Subaru Forester” now conjure a different picture in my head.

Like these two cars, people think of different things when they think of StorNext , depending on how recent their experience is.  StorNext’s beginnings go back to the late 1990s, an eternity in the software world.  There are good things and bad things about a software product with such a long history.

The good things include stability and safety (much like an AWD car), name recognition and respect in the marketplace, and a raft of patents.  Most importantly, it means we’ve had the privilege and honor of helping thousands of organizations do what they do, better.  You can read about some of them here .

The bad thing about a product with a long history is that many people have a picture in their heads of what it is – or more accurately ‘was’ at some time in the past.  But StorNext never stands still.  Every new release brings new features, new architectural elements, and an embrace of new technology.  I’ve been working with the product since the dawn of this century, and it’s astounding how much it has changed over the years.

Because the change is constant, a key part of our job is to continually educate about what StorNext is today.  We don’t want anyone to think it’s still equipped with a cassette deck and stick shift, after all.  We’ve made a lot of improvements since then!

One element in our educational efforts is a brand-new StorNext whitepaper, which you can download here .  It’s designed for anyone who wants a reasonably technical overview of StorNext’s architecture, features, and capabilities.  The paper is organized into three main sections – the StorNext File System, Clients and Connectivity, and Data Services.  Everything about StorNext falls into one of those categories.  Simple, right?

A key goal with the paper was to keep it simple, without over-simplifying, and I think we’ve achieved that.  For those who wish to dive deeper, they are plenty of pointers to additional information.  If reading patents is your thing, there are even links to a pile of the important patents the StorNext engineering team has earned.  I can assure you there’s no alien technology involved, though if your last experience with StorNext was a few decades ago it will probably seem that there is.

So even if you think you know StorNext – or maybe especially if you think you know StorNext, check out the whitepaper .  It’s bound to change your perspective.

To view our Partner blog, click here