NEC and Marquis Broadcast Joining Forces

NEC Corporation of America and Marquis Broadcast Ltd, in media integration products and workflow efficiency, announced a joint solution that provides media companies an efficient and cost-effective way to optimize the use of shared storage resources and ensure protection of media assets in the event of a disaster.

The integrated solution, called HYDRAstor/Marquis Project Parking, leverages NEC’s HYDRAstor Open Storage Suite capabilities and Marquis Broadcast’s core attribute of moving media and metadata between different systems in broadcast and post-production workflows. Media companies, with their heavy data usage, require a reliable storage off-load, which has become even more critical in this time of pervasive multi-media content delivery and regular image resolution increases to 4K and beyond. As the size of media assets drives data growth, media companies need an efficient way to optimize and secure shared storage resources.

The HYDRAstor/Marquis Project Parking solution secures content in the event of fire, theft, flood or equipment failure by replicating data at an offsite location using HYDRAstor’s WAN-optimized replication. With the integrated automation of this solution, users can protect the media assets simply by selecting HYDRAstor as the archive location. They would then have the ability to track the status of HYDRAstor replication through the Parking GUI. For facilities running at or close to capacity on their high-value primary edit storage, Project Parking can be used to free up space by archiving complete Avid projects to NEC’s HYDRAstor scale-out grid storage platform. This solution can provide significant savings compared to adding additional shared edit storage. Workspace Parking is used to provide a DR backup of the entire storage to HYDRAstor.

Marquis Broadcast provides a range of media integration products designed for the data-intensive and challenging requirements of fast-paced media production environments, enabling producers of digital media to achieve maximum efficiencies from their workflow processes.

“Marquis is known for building bridges between different platforms in media production workflows,” said Chris Steele, MD, Marquis Broadcast. “Our Media Highway technology supports the integration of many products and adding compatibility with NEC, a leader in storage technology, strengthens our backup solution offering to our customers.“

Integration of Parking and HYDRAstor provides:

• Minimal operational cost and complexity by utilizing pre-configured archive storage
• Active archiving that reduces Avid storage cost while providing online access
• Savings of up to 20% or more in storage space by removing duplicate copies
• No loss of Avid projects at any point with storage level HA and DR
• Global namespace, which provides fast and flexible access to content
• Modular scale-out to cope with changes such as resolution, retention period, and ingest and delivery platforms
  

“We have been an early provider of storage solutions designed to meet the dense data generated by the media industry,” said Jim Hawes, director operations and product management, NEC. “The Project Parking solution brings two leading companies together to create a powerful solution specifically designed to meet the needs of the media industry.“