Telus Studios Replaces FC With Qumulo Data-Aware Scale-Out NAS

Qumulo, Inc., in data-aware scale-out NAS, announced that TELUS Communications Company (TELUS Studios) and Creative Design, which handles corporate video and graphic design for Canada’s telecommunications company, TELUS, has chosen Qumulo to increase performance and gain instant insight and visibility into data usage.

TELUS Studios and Creative Design are tasked with production of all corporate video and graphic design for the $12 billion company. Although its projects are generally modest, the team required a scale-out storage solution that would allow its staff of 30 to manage multiple files from pre-production to final delivery.

Ronald Knol, senior technology consultant, TELUS Studios, was on a mission to replace the expensive and high-maintenance FC storage the studio had in place with a solution that would be able to keep up with the company’s storage management and visibility needs.

“As we see it, the job of storage administration shouldn’t exist,” said Knol. “If your storage solution is truly doing its job, you should be able to focus on managing your data instead of managing your storage.”

With this in mind, Knol resolved to change the company’s storage infrastructure from FC to NAS, mapping out two key goals: driving down the cost of hardware, and finding a solution with a single, easy-to-read dashboard for monitoring capacity and other critical storage analytics. It was then that Knol came across Qumulo Core.

Qumulo offers data-aware scale-out NAS delivering real-time analytics that provide visibility into data usage and storage across flexible, fast and highly scalable commodity hardware.

Since deployment, the process has been invisible to users, just what Knol wanted from his storage. What has been noticeable is the cost savings.

“We don’t need to run fiber, we don’t need to wrestle with the storage for capacity upgrades, everything is just simple to manage using commodity hardware and connections,” he said. “Qumulo is much more economical than our other systems.”

Equally apparent was the productivity boost for the IT team. Qumulo’s single interface and real-time data analytics allow Knol to assess the system status and note any potential problems. The dashboard’s REST-API also allows for quick customization.

TELUS Studios’ IT team has also come to depend on close interaction with the Qumulo Care enterprise support team.

“It’s generally hard to get traction with our other vendors for upgrades or troubleshooting,” Knol said. “With Qumulo Care, they’re right there whenever I need them. They’re even proactive about alerting me when changes I have requested are included in the updates that ship out every two weeks.”

Going forward, TELUS Studios and Creative Design expect to expand their Qumulo deployment as part of plans to eventually take over external communication videos, including national and international commercial production.