Avid Announce Unity LANshare EX Turnkey Storage Solution

Avid Technology yesterday announced the availability of the Avid Unity LANshare EX v3.0, a turnkey storage solution with almost two terabytes of capacity in an all-in-one rack-mountable chassis. According to Avid, at an MSRP of $40,000, the price of LANshare EX v3.0 is far below the cost of any storage system with similar capacity, yet its unique combination of Fibre Channel and Ethernet interconnections delivers capacity and performance far greater than systems costing two to three times as much.

National Geographic Today – an award-winning daily news journal on the National Geographic Channel that `connects people to the pulse of the planet’ through its focus on science, exploration, natural history, adventure, and culture – is using LANshare EX to share media among three Symphony finishing systems connected by Fibre Channel. “The lower price point for LANshare EX is perfect for an operation like ours that wants the flexibility Avid Unity brings, but where budget realities are always a consideration,” said Ben Kretchmar, director of technical operations at National Geographic Channel. “Now, we have a compact solution that allows us to easily work with both offline resolutions and the higher-end finishing work done on our Symphony systems.”

“LANshare EX meets a wide range of customer needs in a single, extremely affordable chassis, simultaneously providing connections suitable for offline resolutions and higher-bandwidth connections for finishing resolutions,” said Tim Claman, director of Avid Workgroups & Storage. “This solution, along with the others in the Avid Unity family, builds on our 13 plus years experience with rich media and the unique demands of storage in this market. Avid’s storage solutions are purpose-built to deliver maximum ROI for every dollar a customer spends, and, with a range of options for small to large enterprises, our storage family can easily and cost-effectively scale as our customers’ storage needs grow.”