Media creators, broadcasters, streaming services, VARs and SIs around the globe trust Swarm Object Storage. Learn how we earned their trust.
Editors and artists strive to produce creative, compelling content while working under the pressure of tight deadlines, shrinking budgets and fierce competition. And, somebody has to make sure that they have the right tools so they can focus on the work at hand rather than being bogged down by technology issues. Finding the right solutions means professionals can focus on content creation rather than fighting with archaic systems that no longer meet their needs.
M&E Workflow Technology from the Post-Production Perspective
I worked in post-production for seven years at two of Chicago’s leading post houses. Following that, I spent the next twelve years at two of the best Systems Integrators (SIs) providing workflow solutions to the post-production and media industry. Throughout those two decades, I saw this technology struggle play itself out on a daily basis. At the time, it seemed to me that there should be some better answers for storage than just SAN and NAS—which tended to be costly and cumbersome, requiring constant and significant new investments to add more storage capacity for organizations that preferred to keep their data close at hand and not in a cold archive (such as tape storage).
M&E Workflow Technology from the SI or VAR Perspective
Both while working in a post-production house and in the SI/VAR world, I sometimes felt like I was trying to land an airplane on an aircraft carrier during high seas and terrible wind conditions. As a Systems Integrator, I was constantly challenged to come up with innovative workflow solutions in a field where technology is ever changing. This required integrating disparate technologies from various manufactures.
For example, I had a broadcast client approach me to rebuild their post workflow. We needed to leverage current infrastructure and add new tools to deploy a workflow to streamline the post process. After careful evaluation, we ended up using Adobe Premier, Telestream, EditShare, CatDV, Storage DNA and a Spectra Logic tape library in their complex workflow.
How Caringo Helps Media Companies, SIs and VARs Simplify M&E Workflows
Now, working for Caringo, I’m pleased to be in the unique position of being able to help solve these dilemmas for both media companies and the SIs and VARs that support them. In fact, we don’t just help them to be more efficient in storing their data, we can dramatically decrease both the acquisition cost and the operational overhead by giving them the power of the Caringo Swarm platform, field hardened at version 11.3. Swarm is trusted daily by media creators and those who broadcast and stream entertainment as an active tier of storage that brings with it additional benefits such as data management and built-in data protection. To learn more about the various tiers of storage, I highly recommend you check out our recent webinar on this topic, 5 Tiers of Storage for New Video Production Workflows: The Sequel.
Helping Media Companies
Caringo can help solve current challenges that many companies who produce media are wrestling with on a daily basis. Here are a few examples of the situations we see on a regular basis.
Is your editorial team working remotely or need to work remotely? Caringo provides an on-premise active archive where every element of a production is milliseconds away with a few clicks of the mouse and accessible from anywhere in the world. Quickly being able to reach into your archive and monetize old content has been crucial to help many companies produce compelling programs. This has been very important to many of our customers as many productions are on hold currently. And, with our Partial File Restore feature, you can clip a large video file for rapid turnaround of a specific portion of a video directly from the archive layer for editing, review and approval, or streaming.
Do you need to add more space to your expensive SAN or NAS? Adding more expensive Tier 1 storage might not be an option, as many companies have constrained budgets. Even if it is an option, would you prefer to redirect some of that money into other priorities? Caringo provides a lower-cost tier of storage enabling you to offload footage and videos that are not currently in production, freeing up expensive Tier 1 storage to do what it is designed to do—edit active projects.
Are you faced with the challenges of having to work in the cloud? Caringo provides an archive platform that can interface with just about any cloud workflow (in minutes), and it meets the highest levels of security set by the Federal government with built-in features such as WORM, Integrity Seals, Legal Hold, Encryption and Versioning.
Helping SIs and VAR Partners
First off, at Caringo we don’t think of you as SIs or VARs. We have valued partners that work with us as an extension of our Sales and Engineering teams. The entire sales organization at Caringo comes from the channel, so, we know what it’s like to walk in your shoes.
We like to get into the trenches with you. Having tested our platform with the most commonly used applications in the creation of media (Adobe, Avid, Telestream, StorNext and more), we can help you connect the dots in a complex workflow. And, we are happy to help you present the Caringo Swarm Solution for M&E to demonstrate the value it delivers.
Caringo provides comprehensive partner training for your sales and engineering teams. We work with our partners on co-marketing campaigns to drive engagement and funnel leads to our partners. And, of course, we have everything that you would want from a solid partner; weekly blogs, monthly webinars, in-depth whitepapers, product and solutions briefs, deal registration, customer references and trial versions of our software.
We want to help you solve critical business challenges for your customers, and we strive to provide our partners with valuable and timely information, empowering your team with the most up-to-date information on our innovative technology. This allows you to help solve the workflow challenges of today and continue to help your customers in the future.
When is Caringo Swarm a Good Fit?
There are many choices when it comes to selecting a secondary storage platform, and we can quickly help you determine if Caringo is the right fit for a specific workflow. We are able to remotely deploy our solution in your lab or onsite in a customer’s data center to provide a fully vetted pilot, ensuring that we meet and exceed all requirements.
Choosing an object-based storage platform to extend storage capacity is an important investment and it leads to a long-lasting relationship with clients that, by its nature, continues to grow and provide ongoing revenue. We understand that and work hard to make certain that the companies who purchase and the partners that represent us are successful. There is no denying the challenging times in which we live, and we know that being a reliable and trusted partner is the most valuable resource we can bring to the table to help you grow your business.
How Do I Become a Caringo Partner?
If you are interested in partnering with Caringo, please reach out to us by emailing partners@caringo.com. We are happy to answer any questions you have and help put you on the road to solving the toughest M&E workflow challenges.
