World of Wonder Deploys Isilon Through Partner Talon Data

Isilon Systems, Inc. announced that World of Wonder Productions has deployed Isilon scale-out storage to power its media production pipeline, including television, movies and Internet TV.

RuPaul’s Drag U

Using Isilon’s NL-Series, featuring its OneFS operating system, World of Wonder has consolidated all of its media assets and Final Cut Pro-powered video editing operations onto a single, shared pool of storage, simplifying content management to improve IT flexibility and reduce costs. With Isilon, World of Wonder can scale capacity and performance on-demand and in-line with business needs, streamlining its production workflow and accelerating business growth.

"With multiple projects in production at one time, and thousands of hours of raw footage per month, we are always looking for creative solutions to simplify management and streamline production," said Tom Wolf, Chief Administrative Officer, World of Wonder. "Switching to Isilon was the perfect solution to the problems we were experiencing with our previous SAN system."

World of Wonder is an international entertainment company creating innovative feature, television and Internet TV programming, including Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Fantasia For Real. Prior to using Isilon, World of Wonder’s traditional SAN system couldn’t scale cost-effectively to support the production company’s continued growth, which escalated costs, limited application performance and complicated IT operations.

Working with Isilon channel partner Talon Data Systems, World of Wonder deployed the Isilon scale-out storage to consolidate its entire production pipeline onto a single file system, simplifying content management for every stage of its workflow. Using Isilon’s SnapShotIQ software application, World of Wonder can ensure its valuable content is reliably protected, while Isilon’s SmartQuotas application enables internal charge-back for different user groups, improving operational efficiency. In combination with SmartQuotas, Isilon’s SmartConnect application allows World of Wonder to provision its cluster between desktop editing stations and Final Cut Pro editing suites, improving content access and storage utilization to accelerate workflow productivity.

"As World of Wonder continued to diversify its production pipeline, it needed a central storage resource that could scale to meet growing demand, while minimizing management and ensuring its content was always available," said Matt Anderson, sales manager, Talon Data. "Isilon fit the bill, as it’s simple to manage, easy to scale and reliable. Our success deploying Isilon at World of Wonder further demonstrates that for rapidly growing, data-intensive environments, scale-out storage is the way to go."

"World of Wonder sits at the leading-edge of entertainment, where it is redefining how people consume media across movies, television and the Internet," said Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, Isilon. "By leveraging Isilon scale-out storage to simplify content management and accelerate production, World of Wonder is providing compelling validation of Isilon’s benefits for entertainment’s next generation."