Avid NEXIS Media Storage Seeing Strong Customer Adoption
By Jim Bask
Burlington, MA, 4/13/2017
Broadcasters, post-production facilities and educational institutions across the globe adopting Avid NEXIS intelligent media storage at an increasing rate
Buyers citing several key motivators including workflow advantages, true storage virtualization, capacity and system performance, and readiness for future requirements
Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced that Avid NEXIS™, the first and only software-defined storage platform specifically designed for storing and managing media, has seen wide and rapid adoption around the globe, and has delivered valuable benefits to broadcasters, post-production facilities and educational institutions since its launch in April 2016. To date since its debut, over 1,400 systems have already been sold to customers worldwide, with significant sales momentum being seen in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Customers across North America, Europe, and the Middle East cite specific benefits they’ve experienced with Avid NEXIS, including: the ability to manage more advanced and collaborative editorial workflows; much more flexibility to accommodate changing storage needs on different projects; and the breaking down of silos within media production environments; all on a high-performance, highly scalable, flexible, and secure infrastructure that enables organizations to be ready for future media-production demands.
Powered by the Avid MediaCentral® Platform, the industry’s most open, tightly integrated and efficient platform designed specifically for media operations, Avid NEXIS is a powerful, intelligent shared storage system that enables true storage virtualization for any real-time media application. The openness of Avid NEXIS also enables real-time editorial collaboration using not only Avid Media Composer®, but other editorial and creative tools including Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Apple Final Cut Pro X, DaVinci Resolve and more, as well as allowing easy integration with third-party asset management systems. It has been deployed by a wide range of media enterprise organizations around the world including major broadcasters, leading post-production facilities, and well-respected educational institutions.
Broadcast: Sky Deutschland
Broadcast facilities are leveraging Avid NEXIS to meet their needs scaling up for ultra-high resolution TV production, and for enabling more effective collaboration among studio facilities. Sky Deutschland, the pay-TV market leader in Germany and Austria needed to update its infrastructure to speed production schedules as they ramp up content volume. By connecting Avid NEXIS | E4 to Avid Media Composer, Sky’s news and sports production teams now have more power and speed, and are enjoying better collaboration across every stage of their workflow – all the way from content creation to distribution and monetization.
“With competition for viewers so intense, we have to give our customers the very best TV experience every time- which means we have to create and deliver highly engaging content at a very fast pace,” said Kevin Hughes, director of broadcast engineering at Sky Deutschland. “Our investment in the Avid platform has given us a much more scalable, efficient, secure and flexible production and delivery environment. So we can work at the pace we need, with the assurance of having the highest quality production levels. And we’re confident that we now have the technology in place to meet the next wave of future challenges.”
Post-Production: Cine Plus
Numerous post-production facilities are now using Avid NEXIS to facilitate collaborative and efficient 4K production workflows, and bring more flexible provisioning capabilities with virtual storage management. Cine Plus, a leading media service provider in Germany, recently extended its storage environment with a new 120TB Avid NEXIS | E4 storage system, using the System Director Appliance alongside its existing Avid shared storage system, which also includes Avid NEXIS | PRO professional class storage—an even more affordable alternative to the enterprise class Avid NEXIS | E Series storage solutions.
“A number of our multi-editor productions just wouldn’t be possible without the real-time collaborative editorial workflows we have with Avid NEXIS,” said Torsten Seemann, head of technical operations and support at Cine Plus. “The modularity of Avid NEXIS gives us great flexibility to extend the storage systems, or separate them for use at another location, depending on requirements. We’ve also been thrilled with the help we’ve gotten from Avid’s clearly expert and highly experienced technical support team. This combination of technology and expertise has made Avid NEXIS unbeatable for us.”
Education: Middlesex University
Avid NEXIS has also made a significant impact in the market for media-based education, enabling institutions around the world to prepare students for success in their future careers. Middlesex University, a leading media educational institution in London, has invested in Avid NEXIS | E4 and Avid NEXIS | E2 systems with the System Director Appliance to replace an aging, unreliable storage system at its newly formed School of Media and Performing Arts.
“With Avid NEXIS we have a reliable, high-performance and scalable central storage platform to support our curriculum,” said Daniel Sosnowski, Faculty Technical Manager at Middlesex University. “Avid NEXIS has received an overwhelmingly positive response from the industry and will now offer our students first-hand experience using systems that mirrors real-world production facilities, dramatically increasing their employability potential.”
Additional Avid NEXIS Customers Worldwide
Other customers that have recently adopted Avid NEXIS include Sinclair Broadcast Group, Quincy Station Group, The Golf Channel and Fotokem in the US; ITV Studios, Amazon, Envy, Molinare, Westminster University and Edinburgh University in the UK; Israel’s Ha-Mitcham, Discovery Dubai, MBC and Jordan TV in the Middle East; and across Europe at Canal Factory and Cinéfabric in France, Sky Italia, RTL Nederland, and TV2 Hungary.
“We’ve seen incredible success with Avid NEXIS, which has brought many demonstrable benefits to our customers in its relatively short time in the market,” said Jeff Rosica, president, Avid. “These early adopters are some of the world’s most acclaimed broadcasters, post-production facilities and educational institutions. Even with their diverse environments and business needs, Avid NEXIS is proving its versatility and effectiveness in helping all of these organizations increase their production capacity, streamline collaboration, and future-proof their workflows.”