Object Matrix partners with IVORY in France

Cardiff, UK 24th January 2012 – Object Matrix, provider of resilient nearline storage platforms for tapeless video workflows, has today appointed IVORY to be their representative in the French territories.

“Object Matrix is very pleased to announce that Julien Gachot and his team will be our representative in the French territories; Julien has outstanding experience and standing within the international creative video market. We intend to fully benefit from his strong domain expertise and extensive network which spans all elements of the content production workflow.” stated Nick Pearce, Co-Founder, Object Matrix.

MatrixStore, from Object Matrix, has been a hugely successful product in the UK used there by over 25 leading media workflow companies such as the BBC, BT, and Sumners Post Production. As Object Matrix continues its expansion into European markets key partners are being selected in each territory to promote and represent the benefits and cost savings of the MatrixStore solution set.

“Having recently launched IVORY I am delighted to be representing Object Matrix as one of our first product companies.  I look forward to building upon the impressive growth Object Matrix has enjoyed in the UK market and celebrating our mutual success in 2012 and beyond.” said Julien Gachot, Founder, IVORY.

About IVORY.

Founded in September 2011 by Julien Gachot, IVORY helps companies to define and execute their sales strategy. IVORY accompanies its clients, in a very operational manner, to leverage the significant transformations underway in the media industry, namely in the fields of broadcast and the digital distribution of content. IVORY also offers, to companies that do not have a branch in France or in Europe, a global representation, covering the operations of go to market strategy, recruitment and management of reseller and partner channels, direct relationships with key accounts and overall communication.

www.ivory.fr

The View From OM

I met Julien in 2009 at the Hôtel Matignon in Paris at an event run by the now defunct International Business Wales. The events run by John Rees (highly recommend) and the Welsh Assembly team were simply excellent. The events enabled Welsh companies to engage with senior executives of French companies that otherwise would simply have been out of reach. The direct benefit of those dinners with Madame Fillon came in the form of our first French customers in 2010/2011 and signing an agreement with Julien and the IVORY team. So thanks John and the IBW team, shame your good work was cut short.

Object Matrix will be  exhibiting and demonstrating MatrixStore, our cost effective, near-line storage platform at this years show in a variety of file-based workflows. We will be focusing on Media Asset Management and digital asset protection using the suite of applications from Object Matrix but also showing integrations with leading MAM/DAM solutions from Avid, Vidispine, Squarebox and Phoenix7.

Please do come along to stand K10 to get a demonstration of:

- MatrixStore as a secure nearline or parking storage platform used to offload media assets from the production disk (XSAN, AVID ISIS etc);

-MatrixStore as a pre-production archive for rushes to be protected before they are worked on.

- InterConnect. The affordable archive solution for Avid Interplay environments.

We would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the MatrixStore and discuss the new innovative methods and latest technologies that our customers are using to store and protect one of their most crucial assets – their media files. As an added incentive Object Matrix will be giving away an iPad2 to one lucky visitor to the stand (K10) who gets a demo of our solution set. All you need to do to qualify is to book a demo slot with us before the event or come onto the stand, receive a demo and leave us with your business card.

If you are not attending BVE but are still interested in our storage solutions for reducing the pains of storage management within your creative workflow, then we would welcome the opportunity to send you more information, and come to visit you at your convenience.

The View From OM

Trade Shows suck ……  up time, resource and cash, you get sore feet, sore knees, you eat bad food and drink too much. Apart from that they are great!  They can be and have been a fantastic vehicle to promote your technology and network with every element of your industry. I am sure Emma and the team will put on another great event this year.

BBC Wales Chooses MatrixStore to Protect Production Assets

Cardiff, UK 7^th November 2011 – Object Matrix, provider of file based and nearline storage platforms for Avid workflows talks about how MatrixStore, its’ flagship product, has been used in BBC Cymru Wales to ensure content is available for re-use.

With BBC Cymru Wales currently being the largest BBC production centre in the UK, outside of London, and with more projects moving into the region the demands placed upon the post-production team in Cardiff have been steadily growing. Their production infrastructure includes Avid ISIS and Unity systems with over 50 editing clients.

When new projects came into the department capacity was required on the existing Avid ISIS storage platform allowing the editors un-fettered access to the HD media files. In order to provide that storage space content from other projects would be moved off onto other platforms including offline media. The situation was far from ideal as the production teams required instant access to that content which created a real data management and workflow headache.

One project in particular that that needed to be protected and made available online for versioning and re-purposing was the acclaimed Human Planet series broadcast in early 2011. More recently the department also had a requirement to keep key clips from previous years Rugby footage to be available online for re-use using Interplay to find and retrieve the clips on demand.

The issues they faced included:

• All the media files needed to be available on-line in order to re-version the content for different markets.
• There was little or no space on the Avid ISIS to accommodate the 30 Terabytes of full resolution HD content
• Adding more ISIS chassis was not viable commercially nor relevant to the workflow
• The storage platform needed to automate the protection of the content and guarantee its availability
• The solution needed to be compatible with AVID editing clients
• Moving content to and from tape was laborious and error prone so LTO was ruled out
• The storage would be required for other departments within Post production each requiring distinct storage silos
• Some of the other departments rely on the Avid Interplay production asset manager

After considering many different options ranging from adding more ISIS chassis to a big bucket of raw disk the MatrixStore from Object Matrix was selected a the best soluton. MatrixStore acts as a resilient nearline repository, complementing the ISIS shared storage and providing guaranteed access to clips as and when required.

Out of the box MatrixStore provides:

• Centralised Vaults providing instant data protection and access to all assets
• A scalable solution that requires little or no management
• Capability to add and search on Metadata
  • · Ability to keep legacy content available online and browsable from Avid client machines
    • · High availability of data and automatic failover in the case of a hardware failure
    • Ability to add in future storage technologies as and when they become available
    • Security against accidental or malicious deletion

Object Matrix also provided ’InterConnect’, an archive application that enables content to be moved to and from the ISIS storage whilst keeping the Interplay database in sync.

Nick Pearce, co-founder of Object Matrix stated, “Helping broadcasters and post-production companies to protect content long term whilst providing guaranteed access to that content for re-purposing is what MatrixStore was made for. The integration with AVID Media Composer and Interplay just makes it easier for editors or administrators to get their hands on the data when they need it without leaving the environment they are most comfortable with.”

About BBC Wales

BBC Cymru Wales provides a wide range of English and Welsh language content for audiences across Wales on television, radio and BBC websites. Outside London, BBC Cymru Wales is the largest BBC production centre in the United Kingdom, The BBC Wales post-production team produces a wide range of programmes for local output and S4C, alongside some of BBC network’s best known productions; Doctor Who, Torchwood, Casualty, Crimewatch and Human Planet.

The View From OM

We are of course delighted to have been working with the team in BBC Wales over the last 18 months and look forward to continuing that relationship into the future with the Interconnect plugin.

“As those of you that have attended WIG before will know, the idea of the day is to get practioners together, network and talk about real issues and real experience – it’s not a vendor event, and there are no big sales messages – just a friendly atmosphere. Again, as regulars will know, we do like to run a couple of themed sessions, each of an hour or so during the day to get the debate and discussions going and give attendees the ability to be introduced to some of the folks that they don’t know! The themes that we’ve picked out for WIG 3 are Collaboration and the Cloud; and simply The Budget Squeeze.

Rough agenda for the day is as follows:

Drinks and follow-on conversations in the bar, and for those able to stay, we’ll be hosting dinner and continuing discussions. We’re also hoping to launch the WIG community website at WIG3 – and get your feedback on what it should include.”

Full details on their website here.

The view from OM

Very happy to be part of this event as it has generated much debate in the past and brought issues to the fore that need to be discussed by end users, integrators, consultants and vendors alike. The DPP report, and the reaction to it, will certainly ensure a lively, open and healthy discussion I am sure! the event has also brought vendors together to create integrated solutions such as the integration between MatrixStore and Vidispine which can only be a good thing.

We will be attending with our partners DID Technology with whom we will be showing the MatrixStore Mini, MatrixStore Enterprise Nodes, DropSpot, MXFS and CatDV workflows.

Tyrell CCT Provides Piranha Bar with Avid Unity & Object Matrix Storage Solutions

Dublin, October 20, 2011: Tyrell CCT, leading provider of digital media solutions, today announced that the company has provided Dublin facility, Piranha Bar with a complete new storage infrastructure consisting of Object Matrix’s highly secure Matrix Store and Avid’s leading shared storage solution, ISIS 5000. The investment was driven by Piranha Bar’s need to effectively manage its ever-increasing volume of tapeless media, ensure fast access to data and facilitate collaboration throughout the facility. The new archive and storage solutions have resulted in a significant improvement in capacity and greatly increased workflow efficiencies for the prominent post house.

Object Matrix’s flagship nearline storage solution was selected as a secure repository for the Piranha Bar’s multitude of media assets and stores all files including Quicktimes, Avid project overruns, RED raw files and digital archive for clients. The cost-effective MatrixStore requires minimal administrative input, is extremely easy to use and highly scalable. It is designed as a near-line disk platform to securely protect content and has the added benefit of being able to tag items with metadata allowing the repository to be fully searchable by editors. This node based clustered storage array will initially provide Piranha Bar with 36 TB of nearline storage and combined with the unique object-based architecture of MatrixStore, it provides an incredibly secure environment to build Piranha Bar’s digital archive.

“We needed a secure, scalable and self-managing solution that could handle large volumes of client media, and allow simple and immediate retrieval from any location in the facility,” commented Dave Berry, Executive Producer, Piranha Bar. “Tyrell CCT introduced us to The Matrix Store and amazingly it ticked all of the boxes while remaining the most cost-effective solution that is out there. We now have more streamlined processes, reduced overheads and our team are able to fully focus on their creative endeavours.”

Having experienced the benefits of multi-client connective storage Piranha Bar wanted to have the same ease of access to data on their SAN system. To achieve this they upgraded their existing Avid Unity system to Avid’s Ethernet based ISIS 5000. The addition of Avid’s new ISIS 5000 high performance shared storage system allows Piranha Bar to effectively handle its often intensive round-the-clock post production requirements. The ISIS 5000 storage solution provides a high degree of flexibility, interoperability, and scalability necessary to grow with the facility’s needs. With up to 90 client connections and 144TB of useable capacity the ISIS investment has doubled the capacity of Piranha Bar’s SAN storage.

“Tyrell CCT worked through a detailed consultation process with Piranha Bar to understand their exact requirements and determine the solution that would best fit the facility,” commented Bryan Malone, Managing Director, Tyrell CCT. “It doesn’t make any sense to load everything that comes into the facility straight onto the premium Avid storage. Piranha Bar has now got the best of both worlds; the Object Matrix takes the strain and the SAN is allowed to do what it does best –super fast uncluttered access to data.”

He added, “Protecting digital assets is now at the top of the priority list for post-production companies and it needs to be a painless process that allows staff to focus on the creative tasks that ultimately generate the revenue. Investment in the right solutions will guarantee security and integrity of media assets, making the data available on-demand and creating efficient workflows throughout the facility.”

“Object Matrix is very pleased to grow our customer base in Ireland with our flagship product, the MatrixStore,” commented Nick Pearce-Tomenius, Object Matrix. “Piranha Bar’s choice to use our resilient disk based solution will no doubt give them and their customers piece of mind that their creative assets are being securely protected.”

–ENDS—

About Tyrell CCT
Tyrell CCT is the leading creative technology solutions provider for the broadcast, post production, education and corporate sectors in the UK and Ireland. Established in 2000, the company provides complete digital media solutions for the creation, manipulation, management and delivery of digital content. Tyrell CCT represents leading global suppliers of video, audio, storage and media streaming solutions and also provides consultancy, system integration and technical support services. For more information, visit Tyrell CCT at http://www.tyrell.ie

About Piranha Bar

Piranha Bar’s extensive Pre & Post Production Facility offers our Agency, TV Broadcast and commercial Production Company clients all the high-end editing, finishing, motion graphics & VFX capabilities they’ve known and trusted for years. Our Pre-Production facility for ad agencies offers concept and technique development, demos, animatics, storyboarding and script development for longer-form sponsored content. For more information ,visit http://www.piranhabar.ie/

Cardiff, UK 11^th October 2011 – Object Matrix, provider of pre-production and nearline archive storage platforms for tapeless video workflows, has today appointed new reseller partners across Europe and Australia.

Object Matrix has appointed the following resellers:

• Wellen and Nöthen (Germany)
• Telmaco (Greece)
• Fofic (Netherlands)
• Amptec (Benelux)
• Avision (Switzerland)
• Video Craft (Australia)

All of the new resellers are recognised within their localities as value added partners providing workflow and technical expertise to their diverse customer base. Whilst heavily invested in Avid based workflows our new partners recognise the need for complementary, cost-effective solutions.

“The show at IBC re-affirmed the trend that production companies, post facilities, broadcaster and content owners are looking for more reliable and cost effective storage platforms. The shrinking economy across Europe is forcing the film and television community to reassess the cost of their storage infrastructure, consequently affordable nearline solutions are being sought out to complement existing shared storage.” stated Nick Pearce, Co-Founder, Object Matrix.

MatrixStore acts as a pre-production, nearline or local disk-based archive, allowing content to move smoothly through any digital workflow from ingest to delivery. Object Matrix has developed many integrated workflows with the worlds leading providers of PAM, MAM and DAM solutions including Avid Interplay and CatDV from SquareBox.

MatrixStore is also available through its’ extended list of resellers in the UK, Norway, France, Brazil and Australia.

On Tuesday the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), a consortium funded by the BBC, ITV and Channel4 released a report authored by workflow consultants Mediasmiths International. It is titled “The Reluctant Revolution – Breaking Down Barriers to Digital Production in TV”.

The report aims to:

“..assess how core technology trends in digital production, and specifically in storage, access and exploitation of content are affecting the production community, and what opportunities might exist both for suppliers and producers in making the digital revolution more achievable.”

With such a strong statement of intent I was looking forward to reading about the issues faced by production companies and seeing what solutions are being used or mooted. After reading through the report a number of times I have come to the conclusion that the report does indeed contain very good end user survey information but it seems to be very narrow in terms of the analysis and opinion provided. It lacks the depth I had expected.

The Very Good.

The report is concise and clear about the problems being faced by broadcasters, production companies and post facilities, it brings together the perceived problems with the some of the technical choices for solving the tapeless workflow and discusses them in an intelligent articulate manner.

The production of this report also signifies a shift in the collaboration between ‘competing’ entities. The right people are sitting at the table and it is good news for all concerned that the discussions are happening.  Much like the WIG events this is proof that the industry wants to have this conversation. The difference with WIG is that there was less of a vendor presence.

The meeting at Channel4 where the report was launched was also very good. The feedback from the many attendees was that the drive to bring about a better understanding of what the problems are and how to solve them can only be a positive move. A problem shared and all that!

The Not So Good.

The report is no silver bullet but then it is clearly not meant to be. It basically outlines the problems that need to be fixed as garnered from production companies and end users but disappointedly does not hint at a wider selection of the solutions on offer. Intentionally or not it throws up far more questions that it answers. If the report was merely a reflection of production company woes it would stand up to scrutiny but it is not. It also contains analysis and cost models based on what seems to be anecdotal data focusing only a limited set of the available technology solutions.

For instance, the TCO model of LTO is quite a bit off based on our research on total cost of ownership. Does the report take into consideration the elements as picked out by the storage community in our TCO blog?

• Media Rotation costs (tape and spindles)

• Verification of written data costs / proof of ongoing authenticity

• Replication cost (comms link vs manual actions)

• Employees required / costs / employee training/

• Annual value to company of assets being available online

I don’t think it does. The surveyed audience may well only have a single tape drive with a tonne of LTO5 in a box but the principles of data preservation remain. As we move to an IT centric workflow so must many of the data protection disciplines.

Standards

In terms of the standards set by the DPP this is where it will get a bit funky. Even if the standards are aimed at helping production companies to deliver content in a more efficient manner it is the vendors that will feel the pinch when it comes to providing solutions that help with that process.

In my telecoms background you did not put a piece of telecoms kit on the network if it did not conform. There were/are standards bodies and internal standards teams at each vendor. There are a number of implications of going down this route:

- All the members of the DPP need to keep playing nicely.

- Vendors will need to put more processes and resource in place in order to meet those standards.

- Production companies may start to see the cost of enterprise ready IT equipment.

The choice will need to be made between certified solutions or those that adhere to standards. The distinction is important. Choosing the former is likely to cause a lot of disruption.

Tech Choice

According to the report the suppliers to the DPP members are only looking at, or using LTO, USB Drives and the cloud to solve their problems. We and other disk based archive vendors know this is not 100% accurate. Given that we have production companies using MatrixStore or are considering using clustered storage it seems quite remiss to not mention it as a viable option to consider.

Also whilst the report focuses on, no highlights, some of the negatives of current cloud offerings (see this blogpost for our views on the subject) it does not go on to really discuss how some companies are trying to address those concerns nor does it suggest how collaborations between product and service providers could bring scalable, pay as you grow, hybrid models to reality. Further more there is no indication that there are solutions in use today by the worlds largest broadcasters, content providers, post facilities and, most importantly for this audience, Production companies that tackle these problems.

I guess I wanted to see a broader report that encompassed not just what is used today by a portion of the market but also what options might be out there.

The View From OM

Much like work of the Gilbert and George this report will provoke debate even if you love it or hate it and for that alone it is a very good thing. The report also cements the independent status the Mediasmiths have worked hard for. Friends and business can and do mix we just have to expect that every now and then our friends may say things we do not like, whether we believe them to be valid or not.

As I said more questions that answers. What is does highlight is that market is telling us there is a void to fill, perceived or not so I guess we had better go out there and keep on filling it. Clearly the message is not getting out to production companies that solutions are available, they are available now and being used by their peers. Time to sack the Marketing Director? Oh yes .. erm.

Object Matrix will be showcasing MatrixStore, its nearline and archive solution for Avid, Adobe and Final Cut workflows at IBC in Amsterdam for the first time in September.

Object Matrix will be launching its new range of MatrixStore nodes at the show, including the the 2 terabyte Mini node, used for on set data wrangling, and the 48 terabyte node that uses the latest 3 terabyte drives.

MatrixStore is a turnkey clustered storage appliance that acts as a pre-production or nearline archive enabling content producers or owners to keep their data online and available for use 24/7 whilst avoiding filling up more expensive editing storage platforms.

“One of the real benefits of MatrixStore is that new nodes, using the latest and greatest technology, can be added to an existing MatrixStore cluster. Our customers will benefit from the new node configurations as they offer a reduced footprint for the capacity and also better performance” stated Nick Pearce, Co-founder, Object Matrix.

Object Matrix will also, for the first time, be demonstrating InterConnect, its new archive plugin for Avid Interplay at the show. InterConnect allows content to move seamlessly, to and from Avid storage whilst keeping the Interplay Asset Management engine up to date. All this is achieved without the need for the Avid Archive Server thus providing an extremely cost effective archive platform for Avid Interplay environments.

MatrixStore features include:

• Guaranteed ingest with metadata protection and search.
• Secure Ingest Vaults (Locked down preventing accidental deletion).
• Production/Project parking to a Nearline Vault in Avid, Adobe and Final Cut Workflows (one click operation).
• Archiving Legacy assets to a local, online library vault using DropSpot, InterPlay, Cantemo Portal, Vidispine, Phoenix7 and CatDV.
• MatrixStore scales from 12TB to 2PB+ with an elegant plug and scale architecture.

Having recently expanded its reseller channel Object Matrix is reaching out to Avid users across Europe who are looking for cost effective yet feature rich storage solutions that complement their existing infrastructure.

You can visit Object Matrix at IBC from September 9^th to 14^th in Hall 6 on stand 6.C28a.

Please contact sales@object-matrix.com to arrange a meeting or a demonstration.