NETAPP IN MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

To keep from bursting at the seams, the media and entertainment industry rely on infinitely scalable and immortal storage infrastructures. The following are examples of how top companies are leveraging storage to move forward with their operations and continue delivering the best in media and entertainment to consumers worldwide.

INTRODUCTION

As the number and size of Global Eagle’s video files increased due to customer demand and higher resolutions, the company’s shared production storage became a performance bottleneck.

“Since deploying the NetApp EF-Series flash array, we haven’t experienced any outages, dropped frames, or stutter for customer demos. That helps us retain our existing customers and win new ones,” says Aziz Kapadia, director of global IT at Global Eagle Entertainment.

FILM

GLOBAL EAGLE ENTERTAINMENT

Throughout its more than 20-year history of CGI production, Rainmaker has never missed a customer deadline—an impressive accomplishment and a distinction the company is determined to keep, even in light of increasingly demanding customer requirements.

With the NetApp systems in place, Rainmaker was able to add 33% more CPU compute power to its render farm, allowing the company to easily meet production deadlines for Ratchet & Clank. There has been no unplanned downtime with the NetApp systems—a critical factor, since downtime for Rainmaker’s render farm could cost the company up to six figures per day.

BROADCAST AND CABLE

RAINMAKER ENTERTAINMENT

Starting in 1998, Gracenote’s global media database went from information for a few million song tracks to what now amounts to close to a petabyte of storage—with information on more than 130 million song tracks and TV listings for more than 28 countries.

INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA GRACENOTE

“NetApp has consistent, reliable technology that is always ahead of our needs. In 12 years, we’ve never had to make a platform change, and that’s been of immeasurable value to us,” says Matthew Leeds, vice president of operations, Gracenote. “As we’ve moved from 100TB to close to a petabyte, with changing IOPS and data rates, we’ve been able to go to NetApp as a business partner and say, ‘This is our next challenge. What have you got for us?’ NetApp responds with, ‘Well, here’s the technology to solve that.’”

NetApp helps broadcasters, studios, cable providers, and Internet delivery networks solve their big-media challenges so that consumers always have access

to their favorite movies, music and social media networks.

CONCLUSION