GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, today announced that Icon Media, Hollywood, California, has installed GB Labs’ FastNAS F-8 Nitro shared storage system.

Co-founded by CEO Jay Shetty and COO Alex Kushneir, Icon Media provides compelling, socially conscious content, deploying a wide range of in-house services from scripting, filming, directing, post-production; dynamic distribution; and social media management to maximise engagement and measure results.

According to Shetty, “Our mission in working with brands, publishing companies, authors, entertainers, entrepreneurs and thought-leaders is to create video content that has a positive impact on the world. In short, we want to make wisdom go viral.”

And it’s working. New York Times bestselling authors; peak performance leaders; conscientious start-ups and established players have all benefited from the Icon Media ethos. Shetty’s social media alone has more than 30 million followers, and content generated by Kushneir is responsible for more than 150 million views.

However, Icon Media’s success was causing growing pains that had to be addressed, primarily to deal with the volumes of content the company needed to ingest, store, and produce.

Icon Media COO Kushneir said, “In slightly less than two years, we grew from two people serving two clients to 28 people serving nearly 20 clients. I realised that I couldn’t keep buying boxes full of hard drives to keep pace with all the content we were handling. We needed a shared storage system that was fast, accessible, and organised but wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg.”

On a recommendation from an existing employee with prior experience with GB Labs, Kushneir discovered GB Labs’ FastNAS F-8 Nitro server system, a compact, high performance NAS powered by GB Labs’ CORE.4 Lite OS. Sold by Los Angeles-based GB Labs partner RFX Inc, the system has the ability to effortlessly handle large capacities - in this case 96TB – and all at an attractive price point.

Kushneir said, “FastNAS F-8 Nitro met all of our criteria and more. It is indeed a very, very fast system that has made a huge difference to our workflow.

“In my view, any size of company will save time, money, and energy with GB Labs. I can’t imagine anyone doing what we do without a GB Labs storage system.”

GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland said, “We are delighted to contribute to Icon Media’s ongoing success. The benefits they are experiencing directly reflect our aims in designing and manufacturing the technology from the start and we look forward to growing alongside them in the future.”

GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent media storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, today confirmed that the specialist video production company, Kingdom Creative Studios, has installed GB Labs’ FastNAS F-16 Nitro storage system.

Kingdom Creative founder and Managing Director, Simon Harrison, said, “Our talented in-house team works closely with major brands¬ - primarily in automotive but rapidly expanding into new markets - to deliver powerful video content tailored to engage audiences on every platform, from television to social media.

“However, our expansion, coupled with the advent of 4K, multi-cam shoots and the increasing demand for rapid turnaround, meant that we reached the practical limits of what our existing storage system could do. We had to find a better way to manage and operate storage.”

For the majority of its existence, Kingdom Creative had relied on what many still rely on today, i.e., storing video content on individual drives, backing them up, and walking them up and down corridors or transferring them via couriers.

“As we began taking on larger and more complicated projects,” said Kingdom Creative Head of Creative Technology Ben Treston, “especially when collaboration between editors became important, it turned out that the old methods were no longer viable. Today, we have multiple editors working on many pieces of content from the same project. You can’t share individual hard drives and meet today’s expectations for speed and reliability in those types of scenarios.”

The FastNAS F-16 Nitro system meets those objectives for speed, reliability and value in shared storage. Unlike other NAS products on the market, FastNAS is purpose built to sustain heavy workloads and provide stable and reliable performance, based on best of breed technology exclusively developed in-house, and is comprised of a high-performance unit with unique hybrid disk technology, powered by GB Labs’ proprietary CORE.3 OS.

GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland said, “Kingdom Creative emerged from a motorsport world built for speed, and that’s what modern shared storage has been engineered to deal with. FastNAS F-16 Nitro easily accommodates the need for speed – and safety – when dealing with fast turnarounds and sharp bends.”

GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, today announced that M for Media, an Abu Dhabi-based media production house that produces TV shows and adapts international formats for the GCC and MENA region, has installed GB Labs’ FastNAS shared storage system.

M for Media’s Andre Aouad said, “I first heard about GB Labs from the creator of MIMIQ for Avid systems, who forwarded some information that he thought would interest me.

“It did, particularly because, at the time, we had no existing storage and it was rapidly becoming a problem because of the volume of work we were taking in. You can’t keep running back and forth with arms full of hard disks. It’s unproductive, and it was beginning to show. However, GB Labs soon came up with the ideal solution.”

Supplied and installed by partner, MediaCast, the GB Labs FastNAS F-16 Nitro system installed at M for Media can be accessed by up to 10 users of Avid Media Composer, simultaneously if required.

As leaders in intelligent storage solutions, GB Labs recently introduced even more acceleration for FastNAS storage systems with the introduction of new 25 GbE connectivity.

GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland said, “Ultimately, the engine of the newly 25 GbE-enabled FastNAS is our powerful CORE.4 OS, an ultra-high-performance operating system that serves media files with intelligence layers that deliver high stability and unparalleled quality of service. We are delighted to have been referred to M for Media by acknowledged experts, which is further evidence of our growing reputation for excellence.”

According to Aouad, “Recognising that we needed to make a change, we had made numerous enquiries for recommendations for a shared storage system and felt that GB Labs offered the best value and highest performance ratio versus any other solution on the market. Once we had taken the decision, we were up and running with FastNAS very quickly and the benefits we expected were almost instantly felt.

“We have had a very positive experience with FastNAS and are already looking forward to working with GB Labs on future projects.”

FastNAS media production storage systems are available in a range of configurations, including FastNAS F-8 Nitro Studio; FastNAS F-8 Nitro; FastNAS F-16; FastNAS F.16 Nitro and FastNAS F-16 Nitro MAX.

For more information, visit www.gblabs.com

GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for media and entertainment workflows, today announced that the Office of Communications and Brand Management at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, has purchased GB Labs’ FastNAS F-16 Nitro media storage system.

The office provides a wide range of services for the university, including communication strategies for projects that track with the university’s strategic direction and institutional priorities. Among those services are brand identity; public relations; web services; video production; social media; advertising; graphic design; news and promotions.

NAB Show New York 2019, 16-17 October, Booth N359: Leaders in intelligent storage solutions, GB Labs, will showcase its FastNAS storage systems with the introduction of new 25 GbE connectivity at NAB Show New York 2019, taking place at the Jacob Javits Center from 16-17 October.

IBC 2019, 13-17 September, Stand 7.B26: Leaders in intelligent storage solutions, GB Labs will showcase further acceleration of its FastNAS storage systems with the introduction of new 25 GbE connectivity at IBC 2019.