“Working with Rocket, XenData and Wasabi has been a smooth process and much quicker than we anticipated. Our key content is now much more secure and accessible, and we have seen a significant savings in operational and support costs.”
— Darrel Sauerlender, Vice President of Technology Services at AMI

Overview

AMI is a not-for-profit Canadian media company that creates and broadcasts content for the benefit of blind or partially sighted audiences. The company enhances acquired content by adding narration to the audio, which describes key visual elements of a program. This is termed ‘described video’ or DV. The identification of key visual elements, for example via sound effects, is built into the script and production process, eliminating the need for traditional DV. It operates three broadcast services (AMI-tv, AMI-audio and AMI-télé), two websites (AMI.ca and AMItele.ca) and offers an app. Formed in 1989, AMI is a must carry service for all cable companies across the country.

Challenge

AMI has been running a robotic LTO data tape archive managed by XenData software since 2014. This stores all important archived content, making it available as a standard Windows file-folder structure and easily accessible for re-use. AMI wanted to move its valuable archived content to cloud object storage in a way that avoided any disruption to its operations.

Solution

AMI teamed up with Toronto-based media-centric solutions provider ROCKET and chose Wasabi as the cloud object storage provider. They extended the XenData software functionality to support both the existing on-premises LTO and Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage. And then they were ready to transfer 60 TB of media files to the cloud.

A large part of the decision to go with Wasabi cloud storage was the absence of egress fees. Most cloud storage providers charge high fees every time a file is downloaded which makes their offerings expensive and very difficult to budget for. Wasabi has a straight-forward cost structure based only on capacity held in the cloud.

The XenData software was easily expanded to manage both the existing LTO archive and Wasabi cloud storage. The XenData functionality supports two alternate ways to get AMI’s existing content to the cloud: scheduled copying over AMI’s internet connection or bulk transfer using Wasabi Ball, a transfer appliance.

AMI worked with ROCKET to rent a Wasabi Ball and perform the transfer. Once received, AMI’s media files were transferred from LTO tape to the appliance, and the Wasabi Ball was then sent back to Wasabi where the data from the appliance was ingested directly into AMI’s Wasabi storage bucket. The XenData software then quickly created a catalog of the content held in the storage bucket, making it available over the AMI network.

Results

AMI now has a hybrid storage archive with key content being synchronized across both the on-premises LTO tape system and Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage. It was a quick and seamless transition. AMI is now positioned to move their archive entirely to the cloud and de-commission the on-premises LTO system at some point in the future.