SBS Broadcasting Delivers TV Hits to Netherlands With Avere

Avere Systems, Inc. has been chosen by Dutch commercial broadcasting company SBS Broadcasting BV (SBS) to enhance its storage infrastructure.

With viewers demanding high quality broadcasting at lightning speeds, SBS required a reliable, scalable and performant approach to store large quantities of ever-changing content. The storage solution also needed to handle the demands of SBS’ video editing and transcoding services for quality television programs on popular Dutch channels such as SBS 6, SBS 9, Net 5 and Veronica.

SBS had adopted a traditional NAS solution for its storage, but over time as both the cost of the system and the amount of content grew, it searched for an alternative that would provide the scalability they needed, but much more affordably. This prompted SBS to consider an object storage platform but it ran into concerns over performance as well as the file-based access requirements needed for some of its critical applications.

To overcome these issues, SBS chose a combined solution that uses an Avere FXT Edge filer providing a powerful interface allowing any application to access its object storage platform. This integrated solution began as an operational trial using a half-petabyte of storage and, based on this approach, SBS plans to expand the installation to include a large multi-purpose library of broadcast content, video editing and transcoding as well as meeting its backup and archive requirements.

Josbert van Rooijen, manager of broadcast and IT, SBS said: “We were looking for a storage solution to fit all different purposes and found Avere with object storage to be a killer combination. The beauty of this joint solution is that it ticks all the boxes for SBS – scalability, resilience, speed and cost-effectiveness. We look forward to extending the use of the solution to different kinds of all-important data across our environment.“

“With increasing demand on broadcasting companies to instantly deliver an array of content to vast audiences, broadcasters need the assurance that every application can gain access to content no matter how it is stored,” said Ron Bianchini, president and CEO, Avere. “Avere is proud to be supporting SBS in creating a highly flexible storage architecture that is producing and delivering the Netherlands’ most popular content to its viewers.“