CHESA FUTURE-PROOFS 2021 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS & SCIENCES AWARD-WINNING VIDEO PRODUCTION COMPANY LAI VIDEO’S WORKFLOW
The Client
As one of three divisions at Leading Authorities, Inc., LAI Video is a booming boutique video communications company with a team of creative storytellers. Based in Washington, DC, the Emmy-award-winning company specializes in full-service video production, from stylish motion graphics and comprehensive live-action shoots to web video production and commercial production. LAI Video delivers powerful, customized video marketing campaigns for a variety of corporations, trade associations, non-profits, and academic institutions.
The Situation
In the days before any shared storage, the company’s team of video editors and producers operated off their own isolated systems, each with their own external hard drives—and zero connectivity to one another. Then in 2013, they partnered with reseller CHESA to build out a custom NAS shared storage—one that would provide multiple users with simultaneous access to a strong, high-performing system for editing and animating directly on the server, as opposed to working locally and then transferring and reloading and re-downloading files.
However, as the team experienced growth, so too did the complexity of the team’s projects—and along with it, a greater demand for storage space. “We started bursting at the seams with our original NAS system, so we attempted in the short-term to create our own DIY IT by adding another server for offloading non-essential assets and projects,” says James Loizou, Senior Vice President for LAI Video.
Unfortunately, the company began to quickly run out of space, and concerns arose regarding the potential for major data loss. In addition, without the throughput needed, editors were forced to take time away from their primary tasks to move data to and from different storage devices. As a result, the company realized it was time to place their storage architecture in the hands of experts—and once again sought out CHESA for a more future-proof, longer-term solution that could accommodate the growth of LAI Video’s business.
However, as the team experienced growth, so too did the complexity of the team’s projects—and along with it, a greater demand for storage space. “We started bursting at the seams with our original NAS system, so we attempted in the short-term to create our own DIY IT by adding another server for offloading non-essential assets and projects,” says James Loizou, Senior Vice President for LAI Video.
Unfortunately, the company began to quickly run out of space, and concerns arose regarding the potential for major data loss. In addition, without the throughput needed, editors were forced to take time away from their primary tasks to move data to and from different storage devices. As a result, the company realized it was time to place their storage architecture in the hands of experts—and once again sought out CHESA for a more future-proof, longer-term solution that could accommodate the growth of LAI Video’s business. 
Based on CHESA’s suggestion and our own experience, it made perfect sense to go with Scale Logic’s technology—there really was no question, especially given that this new NAS would easily accommodate the storage space we needed while balancing an increase in users over time, plus it would easily integrate with different solutions."
- James Loizou
Senior Vice President, LAI Video
How CHESA Helped Them
Having seen many of its other customers benefit from Scale Logic storage solutions, CHESA recommended upgrading to a Scale Logic product specifically designed for media production environments and workflows: the NX2 NAS.
The current NAS was installed in anticipation of several more years’ worth of growth—and fit LAI Video’s price point as well as its requirements. “We have grown quite dramatically over the better part of a decade. As a result, we are not only seeing an increase in our total number of projects, but also the storage demands for any given project—especially documentary work that demands a large amount of original footage,” says James.
According to Ben Kilburg, Senior Solutions Architect at CHESA, Scale Logic does more than provide reliable, high-performance technology. “As a solutions engineer/architect and a systems engineer, I can say that Scale Logic’s support is better than any other vendor out there—both in terms of pre-sales, sales, and their actual support team,” he says. “Scale Logic is extremely responsive and truly trustworthy; they have a great attitude, and they are always willing to go the extra mile. Since partnering with them in 2018, we’ve been really happy with and very appreciative of their performance.”
