Denver-based post-production house Citizen Pictures has deployed Xcellis workflow storage, powered by Quantum's StorNext platform, to achieve greater efficiency in meeting tight production deadlines. Supplied and integrated by Quantum partner StorExcel, the Xsan-compatible Xcellis system is a highly scalable, easy-to-manage solution that increases the flexibility and productivity possible within Citizen Pictures' collaborative media workflow. Citizen Pictures is an Emmy Award-winning, lifestyle-focused content-creation company that specializes in high profile, talent-driven productions, largely for food-oriented networks and digital platforms. With a team of about 25 people, it creates programs such as Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Smoked and Guy & Hunter's European Vacation. Until it deployed the Quantum Xcellis storage solution, Citizen Pictures had relied on an aging Xserve infrastructure with limitations that the company recognized would eventually prevent it from maintaining the capacity and performance necessary to meet production deadlines.
"The Xcellis solution specified by StorExcel not only enables us to take advantage of Quantum's powerful StorNext 5 platform but also allows us to start with the capacity and performance we need now, and then scale up the storage system economically as those needs change," said Andrew Moraski, post-production supervisor at Citizen Pictures. "With Xcellis, we brought the latest storage technology into our existing operations and very quickly began realizing efficiency gains that make it easier to meet our clients' deadlines."
Xcellis enhances productivity in collaborative media environments by integrating the most important components of workflow storage into a single easy-to-manage, fully scalable hardware solution. The solution takes full advantage of the StorNext 5 platform to provide content production, distribution and archive with exceptional reliability and performance, including industry-best streaming performance for ingest, transcoding and delivery. The Quantum solution also offers optimized high-speed Fibre Channel SAN connectivity, cost-effective LAN, SMB and NFS sharing options and IP connectivity.
StorNext Connect, the full-featured management tool integrated into Xcellis, provided StorExcel and Citizen Pictures with an intuitive wizard interface that reduced the time and cost required to deploy the entire storage system and clients. Now that the system is deployed, StorNext Connect offers management and troubleshooting capabilities that help the post house to identify and resolve issues quickly for optimal performance and maximum uptime. It also supplies real-time monitoring and trending statistics that aid Citizen Pictures in maintaining the mix of performance and capacity ideal for its operations and project workload.
"Citizen Pictures works with demanding clients that continually raise the bar," said Lance Hukill, president at StorExcel. "Xcellis will allow the company's content workgroup to leverage the StorNext platform to enhance its efficiency and productivity, and the continuous scalability of Xcellis will ensure that Citizen Pictures can easily build on this initial investment to grow along with its clients' ever-higher expectations."
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