Archion Collaborating With Square Box and Cache-A

Improving media workflows and providing creative post production and graphics professionals, Archion, Inc. is collaborating with Square Box Systems Ltd. and Cache-A Corp. to offer facilities of all sizes a solution for Apple, Adobe, Avid and Autodesk workflows.

The integration of Archion’s EditStor ES shared storage system, Square Box System’s CatDV Media Asset Management software and Cache-A’s line of archive appliances provides an alternative to expensive solutions.

"The extensive testing and tight integration of EditStor ES with CatDV and Cache-A offers facilities the promise of a single high-performance collaborative storage infrastructure," said James Tucci, CTO of Archion. "It includes all of the tools they need to store media, log and organize content and archive, manage, search and retrieve those assets, at a very attractive price. Enabling technology like EditStor ES, CatDV and Cache-A makes workflows sing."

"Improving media management and archiving are crucial parts of today’s digital production workflows, and we are very happy to team with Archion to offer such a tightly integrated, cost-effective and flexible solution," said Ken Bell, CEO of Square Box. "It’s a natural progression and all part of delivering the right solution to small- to medium-sized facilities."

In this workflow, EditStor ES provides the place to ingest media, CatDV handles digital asset management and Cache-A serves as the archive – a solution for digital media professionals working with Final Cut Studio, Adobe CS5, Adobe CS6 or Avid Media Composer. The integration of CatDV with EditStor ES takes the tasks of ingest, asset management and editing to a whole new level. Because CatDV Server recognizes EditStor ES volumes, finding and cataloging media is quick and intuitive.

At the same time, EditStor ES supports backup and archiving with Cache-A and CatDV because both CatDV and Cache-A talk directly to it. Previously, a client was needed to see both the Cache-A device and the storage device. Now, by eliminating the need to tie up another client computer, faster data transfers are possible, particularly because of GigE, rather than FC, connectivity.

Backups can be started from either Cache-A or CatDV, and with asset management built-in, CatDV can instruct the Cache-A appliance to archive or restore the data. Cache-A archive appliances store data on LTO tapes.

"This announcement underscores our commitment to working closely with other industry leaders to enhance digital workflows," said Mark Ostlund, VP of sales and marketing at Cache-A. "We are delighted to partner with Archion to extend our ‘Archiving Made Easy’ approach to improving archiving for today’s digital media professionals."

EditStor ES Shared Storage
A self-contained SAN, EditStor ES has been designed to enhance media workflow management in small- to mid-size post houses and creative agencies as well as in enterprises, schools and houses of worship.

Easy to set up and integrate into existing video and audio workflows, it is ready to configure and users can start sharing media across Mac, Windows and Linux platforms. By eliminating individual seat costs or licenses, an unlimited number of workstations can be connected through a standard GbE switch.

Feature Rich for Post Production
EditStor ES facilitates the flow, conversion and management of media within the production workflow by offering the rich media management feature set – and at a price that is affordable, less than half the cost of competitive solutions.

With volume expansion, for example, users can create shared volumes of any size and expand volumes on the fly. Volume expansion is all managed through a web-based administrator interface that doesn’t affect workflow. Another feature, project sharing, extends to projects that use popular editing tools. Avid project sharing, for example, will be transparent to the Avid Media Composer system and doesn’t affect the Avid workflow. Project sharing for Final Cut Studio and Adobe will also be available.

The rich media management feature set of EditStor ES has all of the automation tools of an enterprise storage server, including storage pools, volume replication and snapshot, data replication and volume manager as well as support for tape back systems and virtual tape volumes created in the system. To deliver connectivity to the workstations that drive workflow, it supports user and group management, user security and access as well as industry standard IT protocols.

The Archion Product Family
Powered by the Vdisk technology for a flexible and scalable experience, Archion offers a line of shared storage solutions for media workflows. In addition to EditStor ES, other Archion storage solutions include:

Synergy XTR: RAID protected add-on storage for Avid Unity MediaNetworks
Synergy IS: The alternative RAID protected add-on storage for the Avid ISIS 5000
Alliance LT: Integrated, full-featured SAN solution
Alliance Pro: The SAN for media workflows
Canvas: RAID storage system for Digital Intermediary and other high bandwidth applications