GB Labs – Changing the landscape of modern shared media storage
Dominic Harland, CEO & CTO
GB Labs is a well-known provider of industry leading storage, focusing on media-based production storage, from traditional on-premise to innovative solutions, that are ideal for remote and hybrid working needs. The company was established over two decades ago on the premise that regular shared storage has multiple restrictions and complications that can make it expensive and problematic to use.
Modern day shared storage needs
Post pandemic, working patterns of the broadcasting industry changed beyond recognition.
Employing permanent home or remote workers, who may never actually go to an office, is the new norm and increasingly companies are also collaborating with freelancers and third parties for their media production needs. This outsourcing approach brings with it new challenges, such as how third parties gain access to specific files and media assets, securely, whilst also monitoring use?
GB Labs believes that traditional on-premise shared storage, which has always been about teams being ‘in the building’ or office, is not suitable where third party and freelancers are employed.
To address their needs, as well as those of in-house remote and hybrid teams, companies are looking for functionality that centrally manages storage, with the ability to provide fast secure storage to third parties.
This functionality needs to support fast and simple access for creatives to global shared storage, that can also be scaled up quickly as demand changes, all while keeping that “golden” content safe, secure and auditable, due to the nature of content concerns.
Here are some reasons why:
- Faster workflows avoid the need to move data/hard drives around an office with potential loss of files and version confusion.
- Working collaboratively worldwide and sharing work with colleagues in real-time, means that media teams can benefit from faster turnaround, saving time and money.
- As no file duplication is required, integrity of data is maintained and hardware costs are cut, since no costly duplicate media is needed.
- Compatibility means that separate operating systems can talk to each other and there are no complicated problems.
- Assets are secured in a single point of truth making for simple backup, archive and MAM (Media Asset Management) strategies.
Global shared storage solutions
GB Labs believes that it’s not possible to manage your assets efficiently without global shared storage – it simply won’t work.
Customers want efficiency and flexibility to adapt to emerging technology, which allows them to retain their best editors, helps and provides elevated levels of security and encryption and does not compromise on speed.
Most importantly, they want technology that has the ability to work in harmony with existing and growing media workflows, whilst reducing costs of service.
GB Labs has developed new technology that solves these requirements and achieves something that is effective, convenient and simple to use, called Unify Hub. It optimizes media workflows for production and post-production houses, as well as every workflow that incorporates large media files.
In conjunction with GB Labs’ shared storage, Unify Hub provides a seamless solution for broadcasting and media teams, connecting all remote, on-premise and off-prem users to the central storage hub.
GB full media eco-system has the flexibility, scalability, speed and security for anyone working in the Media Tech industry. Its comprehensive and growing range of storage and archiving products are designed to serve its customers’ needs from ingest to archive and everything in between.
Solutions are scalable in both capacity and performance, with minimal downtime allowing you to ‘buy as you grow’, which helps to keep initial investments low.
GB Labs’ server solutions are shipped with their own operating system, CORE OS, which has been built from the ground up and optimized for media production. CORE OS enables Unify Hub and NebulaNAS, its soon (to be launched) cloud-based storage solution.
The current version is CORE.5, CORE.5 Lite and CORE.5 Cloud. CORE OS is designed to work on all sorts of different hardware.
GB Labs provides installation and front-line assistance by its in-house team of support engineers and offers a range of support packages to support business needs, including a remote engineer service and a cost-effective warranty of up to five years.
Unlike other manufacturers, all departments sit under one roof so that customers can make contact directly and support issues are dealt with extremely quickly and efficiently.
The future: always about the customer
GB Labs empowers creative workflows for some of the best-known names in the Media and Entertainment industry and has been much acclaimed for design and innovation, including pioneering spinning disk and SSD shared storage technology.
Its future lies in continuing to design, build and support advanced on-premise storage solutions, hybrid working solutions such as Unify Hub and cloud-based solutions, like NebulaNAS, to meet the demands of its customers, needing a shift in workflow. It will also continue to improve its connectivity to its CORE OS.
The future, it believes, is not just about offering a simple cloud or on-premise storage system but to offer the flexibility to move dynamically between the two.
Discover More about GB Labs: https://www.gblabs.com/
