CASE STUDY - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Facilis TerraBlock Rounds Out Polycom’s Post Production Workflow
As the go-to choice for video, voice and content collaboration solutions, Polycom provides solutions and services to more than 415,000 clients that represent the full spectrum of industries and enterprises. To produce company video content that ranges from client testimonials to promotional content and internal communications, Polycom calls upon a small, but nimble in-house video production crew. In order to keep projects on track for delivery, Video Production Manager Tim Rose and team rely on a Facilis TerraBlock shared storage system.
“We have a massive influx of projects being sent our way regularly, and getting them all ready in time is quite the undertaking,” shared Rose. “To keep on top of it all, we have to be able to have multiple editors working on the same job at the same time without any lag, and TerraBlock gives us the bandwidth and file sharing structure that we need to do that. The system also protects our assets and helps us avoid the mess of dealing with duplicated versions; its performance has been seamless.”
Prior to purchasing TerraBlock, Polycom took the system for a test drive while working on the production of the company’s annual partner conference “Team Polycom”. After evaluating TerraBlock, Rose and his team were sold on the system. “I couldn’t believe how easy it was to set up TerraBlock, and I loved that I was able to learn how to use it under an hour,” explained Rose. “Even our least tech savvy employees are able to easily navigate the user interface. Setting up volumes, adding and reducing space, and adding workstations are super easy tasks that don’t require IT support. The whole experience was flawless, and definitely impacted our decision to invest in TerraBlock.” Continuing, he added, “It’s the simplicity of TerraBlock that makes it so great. I no longer have to worry about how to share assets with the team, I can mount the drives and forget about it; I don’t have to do anything, because it just works. TerraBlock gives you all the benefits of a simple hard drive on your desktop without the messy workflow of local drives.”
Working side-by-side with reseller Key Code Media, Polycom installed a TerraBlock 24D with 24TB of capacity in its facility in June 2014, linking three MacBook Pro edit suites and three Mac Pro Tower suites running Adobe Creative Cloud 2014 via 1Gb Ethernet, as well as a dedicated Mac Mini worker node machine for CatDV’s media asset management solution; NSA Akomi video library and approval tool; and StorageDNA for LTO archive.
Noting the benefits that the new end-to-end workflow has brought to Rose and his team, he said, “The interaction between TerraBlock, CatDV and StorageDNA has been so smooth. It’s been amazing to have storage that everyone has access to at such great speed. Having TerraBlock linked to CatDV has also saved us a ton of time, because we can easily search for footage and quickly pull it up.”
Polycom’s team also manages internal live productions, including virtual “all-hands” sales meetings that are telecast via Polycom’s video collaboration solutions. To facilitate these live broadcasts, which star Polycom’s President of Sales for North America, Rose and team employ a green screen and NewTek TriCaster connected to TerraBlock to quickly access stock graphics and footage that help make the presentation more dynamic.
“We get to have some fun with these meetings, because of their talk show-esque nature, and it’s really helpful to have TerraBlock work so well with our TriCaster. We have access to our assets at a moment’s notice,” explained Rose. “As a result, we can be more creative because we can quickly change out backgrounds and graphics without wasting any time searching for footage.”
Since installing TerraBlock, Rose has seen a noticeable change in the team’s productivity. “I can say with certainty that TerraBlock has helped us become more efficient. We can run several different data-intensive video tasks at 1080 HD without any lag; it’s awesome, especially because we’re a small team tasked with putting out a lot of high quality video,” he added.
While Polycom’s TerraBlock currently holds 24TB of capacity, Rose expects that the company will eventually expand its storage capabilities in the future, a transition that will prove seamless and affordable with TerraBlock in place. Rose concluded, “When originally evaluating solutions, scalability was a huge factor for us; we wanted to go with a storage option that wouldn’t max out too soon, and prompt the need to buy another piece of hardware. You can easily expand TerraBlock, making it more cost-efficient in the long run.”
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