Totally Transformed: How Leading Media Businesses Are Accelerating Their File Transfers And Transforming Their Operations
Transforming Business in a Fast-Paced World
The media business never stands still. Today, every media organization is challenged with operating faster, more efficiently, and at lower cost than ever before. What’s more, this is a trend that shows no sign of slowing or reversing.
Chances are, this is a familiar picture. You’re creating more content with larger file sizes. You’re distributing it to more places in more formats. And you’re partnering with more companies in more locations.
While you’re fighting all the fires that are just part of doing day-to-day business, you’re also looking to ensure your company can meet its wider objectives. Importantly, this means not just focusing on the realities of today’s environment, but looking ahead to the even tougher market you know is yet to come.
Adapting to ever-evolving challenges will mean nothing short of transforming how your production business operates.
The good news is that successful transformation is entirely within reach. In fact, for many operations, the answer is as simple as taking a fresh look at how business-critical media assets are moved around their networks.
In this guide, we spotlight four organizations that are taking their operations and their businesses to a whole new level.
“The problem we have with video is that it’s sourced all over the world, and of course video files are massive. We need to get them back to our base in London as soon as possible in order to put them through our publishing systems, and a lot of steps that go into the workflow before publishing like checking with legal, subediting, adding graphics, titles, credits and so on.”
Matt Whiting
Head of Applications
The Guardian
Taking Video Global at the Guardian
Global news organization the Guardian has rapidly evolved from a traditional print newspaper in the UK to an international web-first powerhouse.
As an early digital adopter, they understand the benefits of harnessing new formats and technologies. Print, images, and text are just part of the bigger picture. Key to the Guardian’s longer-term success will be exploiting the power of video to tell great stories.
But, of course, video files can be very large.
It’s a big challenge. One that the Guardian realized they needed to solve if they were to truly transform the business. It was clear: Unless they changed how they approached the problem—moving away from slow, legacy technology such as FTP—this would significantly limit their success
Next-generation news demands next-generation file transfer
The answer was to adopt a highly secure, next-generation file transfer solution (in this case Signiant ® Media Shuttle).
This enabled them to quickly and easily send large video files from virtually anywhere in the world (even over less-than-optimal connections).
Simply, it opened the business to harnessing video in greater volumes and in a more timely manner (a key measure of success for any news organization).
The result is that the Guardian has been able to transform the scale and delivery of its video initiative, adding powerful new ways of engaging an ever-growing global audience.
Read the full case study on www.signiant.com.
“There’s no guaranteed Quality of Service over the internet. You can’t depend on FTP to get the file there on time. You need a guaranteed transfer time or you can’t work on the kinds of projects we work on”
Henric Larsson
COO
Chimney Group
Creating Greater Reliability at Chimney
Top-fight filmmaking and media creation agency, Chimney Group produces over 6,000 creative pieces every year. As an international business, its employees work across 11 offices in 8 countries worldwide.
With a highly valued, hard won reputation to protect, quality is everything. In fact, beyond the business’s own high standards, some client sectors require vendors to uphold strict standards of quality in order to remain certified in their industries.
For Chimney, that meant scrutinizing the delivery of high-value media files. To secure the ultra-competitive business of elite automotive manufacturers— and other clients whose brand assets are well-guarded treasures—Chimney knew it had to break through the reliability barriers traditional file transfer couldn’t surmount.
Time to move on
The team at Chimney quickly recognized that taking a completely fresh approach to how they sent large files would be the catalyst to grow their business. By unshackling themselves from the speed, security, and reliability limitations of FTP, they could build valuable enduring trust with customers— both existing clients and those in new sectors. What’s more, they could open up completely new lines of business focused on accelerating how they served all clients.
Ultimately, this has meant Chimney can deliver better productions, faster, and more profitably. The result? A transformed business, fantastic work, and very happy clients.
“Outsourcing specific pieces of the media supply chain is a key component to the international operations model. By using internet connections, automation, and acceleration, we are able to avail ourselves of capacity and capabilities wherever they exist.”
Rick Cole
Senior VP of Technology and Operations
Turner International
Unifying Global Production for Turner International
When you’re a global broadcaster delivering programming in 200 countries across 35 languages and 38 brands, you know that getting files where they need to be fast is fundamental to success. Add into this a primary focus on delivering location-based entertainment, and it goes from being important to becoming mission-critical.
It’s a challenge Turner International faces every day. The reality is that many of the locations they send content to simply do not have the bandwidth that’s taken for granted in North America or Western Europe.
So without moving to more efficient file transfer, the company simply wouldn’t be able to realize its core ambition of unifying production across the planet.
Setting international standards
The answer was to use file acceleration technology from Signiant. This not only meant they could create a unified process for moving files between team members around the world, it would also enable Turner to use more efficient cloud storage as a central hub for content distribution.
By accelerating content simultaneously in multiple directions, they could unlock powerful new ways to implement smarter outsourcing across the business (one of the key foundations of their international strategy). It also paved the way for the company to leverage greater use of the cloud to lessen the reliance on costly on-premise data centers.
Ultimately, by accelerating file transfer, Turner was able to accelerate its transformation into a next-generation international media operation.
Read the full customer testimonial on www.signiant.com
“As the premium brand in New York, we are looking to create an ecosystem for our clients, collaboration and file transfer are important parts of that. We needed everyone—including filmmakers, producers, studios, post production supervisors, visual effects artists, editors, and directors—to feel like they were in the same room, regardless of whether they’re in New York, London or Los Angeles.”
Zak Tucker
Co-founder
Harbor Picture Company
Optimizing Collaboration for Harbor
Everyone in media production knows the importance of effective collaboration. Today, every production represents the combined efforts of multiple, highly talented people and partners—often geographically diverse—all racing to deliver the best quality in the shortest time.
It’s something Harbor Picture Company knows only too well. The firm operates at the pinnacle of the post-production world, engaging with creative professionals wherever they’re based from its studios in New York City. Making this work effectively means moving massive files locally, nationally, and internationally.
HIGHer resolution, less room for compromise
To truly unlock the full power of an extended ecosystem of world-class partners, Harbor knew that with its aging technology limitations, FTP was holding them back (especially as they made the move from HD to 2k to 4k). The files were simply too large and the realities of their business meant they needed to do more, faster than previously possible, with the best talent on the planet (no matter where they were located).
Winning the war for talent
For Harbor, accelerating file transfer has been a key component in developing a more effective network of collaborators. It means they now get seamless access to top talent in a fast, cost-effective manner— no matter whether that talent is up-and-coming new blood in London or an established master in LA.
Ultimately, it means they can ensure their business transformation continues to be on the cutting edge, unlimited by geography.
Read the full case study on www.signiant.com
How Will You Transform Your Business?
Today, everything in business is happening faster. With so many companies fighting for market share, there’s no room for delay.
While accelerated file movement is key for any modern media workflow, pure speed is really just the beginning.
To be successful, productions require faster file transfer systems that offer rock-solid reliability, let you know where your assets are in the transfer process, and protect those assets with enterprise-class security measures.
By adopting an efficient, next-generation approach, you can fundamentally transform how you do business. You can become more efficient, more collaborative, and more able to take advantage of new opportunities.
What’s more, with cloud-native SaaS technology, you can do this without the time, cost, and hassle of expensive, complex, time-consuming on-premise equipment or software. Systems can stay updated behind the scenes, making them easier to use, maintain, and manage.
And with truly next-generation solutions such as those from Signiant, you can do this at virtually any scale.
To see more examples of media organizations transforming their operations, visit our case study resources.
