Big Success is an advertising agency developing TV ads for ‘challenger brands.’ Founded in 2004 with two offices operating in ten countries, they now manage more than 150 clients, creating and producing thousands of TV and Web commercials for companies that can’t outspend their category leaders. These clients have ambitions that exceed their conventional marketing resources. Yet, Big Success has proven that small budgets can deliver results on TV.
Being able to continue its growth to manage and provide HD television production on a budget requires efficient solutions. With 25 employees, these creative professionals produce an abundance of data that needs to be safely stored with access to everyone involved.
With clients in several countries and location shoots for television commercials, employees are often on the road and need constant access to the agency’s data. Using a laptop runs the risk of damaging or getting it stolen. So right away, a backup solution is a must.
Jean-Marc Segati, Vice President International Strategic Planning at Big Success says, “Not only does television production require large amounts of data to be stored, we use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign programs to create POS materials with Mac computers. It’s extremely important to have easy access to our files and to develop a work flow to manage, create, and communicate with our clients to deliver remarkable results with a smaller budget.”
At first, a conventional server was installed and maintained by an external IT company. This turned out to be too expensive and cumbersome. Although cloud-based solutions were looked into, most required expensive monthly payments or weren’t compatible and enough for Big Success storage requirements.
Due to the nature of their client’s need to produce quality advertising on a budget, Big Success needed a solution that is easy to manage, inexpensive, and with the ability to secure large amounts of data with flexible storage and access in a creative environment. Enter WD’s My Cloud EX2 network-attached storage solution.
Because they were developing projects with large amounts of data, My Cloud EX2 capacity of 12 TB was more than enough to meet their needs. Integrated into the My Cloud EX2 are WD Red drives and NASware technology, which means better performance, compatibility, integration and reliability – all elements Big Success needs for fast turnaround schedules. It also offers the security and privacy of a private cloud knowing that important documents are in one safe place. For managing and backup of irreplaceable video and editing, My Cloud EX2 is already setup in RAID; if need be additional backup to external drives or to an Internet cloud service is an option.
Both client and agency are able to share files, stream media and access content from anywhere. And setting up the My Cloud EX2 was simple. “The setup worked as promised. It proved to be so easy our art director was able to do it without external IT help. The data migration worked without a hitch,” stated Jean-Marc Segati.
My Cloud EX2 is so easy to use any Big Success employee is able to manage it thereby eliminating the cost for an external IT company. Big Success not only acquired a backup solution, they profited by improving workflows and saved money by simplifying their IT infrastructure including the need to reconfigure the office network.
Employees have access to the agency’s data even when they are on the road with My Cloud apps available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. They can monitor drives and manage users (including clients) from any computer, tablet and smartphone. Productivity is greatly increased as the latest version of an ad spot can be shown to a client on an iPad while an artist is working on it in the office.
The onetime cost of their My Cloud EX2 is smaller on a per terabyte basis than the yearly service fees of many cloud accounts this means it will pay for itself in just a few months. “Because of the price point, we can add an additional My Cloud EX2 as our data storage needs grow,” concludes Jean-Marc Segati.