Let’s make the most of your studio setup.

Creative teams are more dispersed—yet more connected—than ever before. The problem remains, however, that the ways in-house & remote collaborators are storing, sharing, editing, and exporting media files can lead to overwhelming administrative headaches, and hours (or days) of time wasted.

Until now, creative teams were also forced to make a distinctive choice: Invest in costly on-premises hardware, while committing to shipping hard drives or requiring remote employees to download every file; or seek out a hodgepodge of server-based & cloud storage solutions that only help solve some of the problems hindering progress. Historically, teams had to pit the two workflows together without considering integrating their potential.

Suite is the first cloud storage solution that enables teams to use their powerful on-premises hardware as a shared “on-site” cache location, which supercharges the editing experience for in-house employees while maintaining real-time connectivity between remote collaborators. Teams are no longer required to make the “either/or” choice between on-prem investments & cloud-based connectivity; now, it’s possible to maintain real-time connectivity to remote employees while simultaneously maximizing your studio’s in-house efficiency.

Here, we’ll outline the benefits of Suite’s cloud storage for hybrid & dispersed teams, and explain why utilizing our powerful onsite caching feature can make an immediate impact on your creativity.

Pre-caching & Onsite caching with Suite Storage

First, we’ll explain pre-caching, which allows teams to proactively cache specific files & folders stored on Suite to a local SSD or server in advance. This feature provides an advantage for remote creatives who need to maximize their experience on Suite, regardless of location or quality of internet connection. Opting to pre-cache media keeps the files you need close-at-hand, and ensures your time is spent editing, not waiting around for files to download & sync.

Now, let’s apply the idea of pre-caching media to an entire in-house team with powerful on-prem hardware. If you have 75 machines connected to Suite in your studio, and you point the cache location of each machine to the same local server or NAS—that on-prem hardware now becomes a “shared cache” location for everyone on your team using Suite, significantly reducing network strain & enhancing workflow performance. The best part? This entire cloud-based workflow on Suite looks & feels just the same as connecting your entire in-house creative team to a standard NAS or server system—except your files are equally accessible to your remote workforce.

Right out of the box, Suite’s powerful pre-caching & onsite caching features provide a streamlined way for remote creatives & in-house employees to maximize their experience on the cloud.

Win #1: Integrate on-prem hardware with Suite

Suite’s unique onsite caching feature leverages the hardware you already have, opening up new avenues for speed & productivity. Instead of requiring additional local storage on every user's device for caching—which works really well for individual, remote employees—Suite utilizes existing server or network infrastructure centralize the cache location for everyone's benefit. Optimizing your current hardware while streamlining file management comes easily with Suite.

Win #2: Reduce network demand in the studio

Other cloud storage solutions require individual users to cache singularly to their local machine, without the opportunity to connect a “shared cache” between in-house employees. This method offers some effectiveness on a small scale, but becomes inefficient when many users need access the same media on the same network; data gets stored redundantly across everyone’s individual device, decentralizing updated assets & eating network bandwidth.

Suite does things differently: By implementing onsite caching, teams ensure that once a piece of data is fetched from the network and cached in the correct, designated location, it becomes instantly accessible to all team members connected to the Suite drive. This not only drastically reduces the demand on your studio’s network—since the same data isn't being repeatedly accessed by different users simultaneously—but it also accelerates playback & further enhances the editing experience on Suite for hybrid teams of any size.

Win #3: Centralize media with a single source of truth

Most cloud storage services cause serious “version-itis,” where multiple collaborators have different versions of the same file saved locally, leading to inconsistencies, and the daunting task of synchronizing data, which inevitably falls on the hands of the creatives.

Suite centralizes files on the cloud upon first upload & never requires you to download or sync them again—this is because Suite is a cloud-native filesystem that treats your data intelligently, only reading the bits of data you need in the moment. With your files living on the cloud 100-percent of the time, without the need to sync or download them, Suite offers teams the opportunity to establish a truly centralized source of truth that updates in real-time, no matter how many times you—or any number of your team members—presses “Save.” For teams with dispersed employees, both in-house & remote, Suite streamlines the process of keeping everyone connected while maximizing the performance of your in-house hardware and internet connectivity.

Accelerating creativity for hybrid & remote teams

The evolution of creative workflows in our increasingly digital & dispersed world necessitates a solution that bridges the gap between in-house and remote collaboration without compromising on efficiency, speed, or creativity. Now, creative agencies and studios can have the best of both worlds. If you've recently invested in on-prem hardware, Suite's cloud storage will amplify your investment & help you make the most of the creative minds that surround you.

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