Fresh off of NAB and talking with many, many people about Signiant and how they are using the product to save and make money – it’s clear to us that almost anyone that is managing digital files absolutely needs to use Signiant to make their operation more nimble and efficient.
In the spirit of Hollywood and the infamous Top Ten List, we’ve compiled a list of what we didn’t hear at NAB this year.
1) We are happy shipping tapes and hard drives. Shipping tapes and drives meets your business needs and is cost effective – even though on average it costs $200 and as much as $700 for each one shipped. Some organizations that we have encountered are shipping as many as 130,000 tapes per year … yes $26M worth of tape shipments per year. Well, I bet their shipping company and tape suppliers are giving them a great discount. Not to mention, $0.45 per month to store each tape OR the environmental impact of all of those tapes in a landfill. Trivia fact: 130,000 tapes stacked up are 4Xs as tall as the world’s tallest building.
If you are shipping tape – check out the Tape ROI Calculator: http://www.signiant.com/tape-roi-calculator/ – the tool can show you how much money you can save.
2) We are happy with FTP in our organization. FTP is pervasive in many organizations and easy to use – even though it requires installing software on client computers, it is prone to mid-transfer failures without restart capabilities, is slow, represents a security hole of vital data without any auditing capability and finally is unmanaged. No wonder so many people are selecting Signiant to replace their FTP solution.
For more on Signiant vs. FTP, check out: http://www.signiant.com/FTP-White-Paper/ for a comparison.
3) We are already getting the most out of our WAN Bandwidth. Companies are using their networks to move all sort of files over networks and improving efficiency dramatically. However, over longer distances (e.g. Seattle to LA) as much as 95% of the bandwidth you are buying is lost due to network inefficiencies – having a dramatic impact on the value you are getting from your WAN. You could be wasting $9000 per month per location in your organization and not even know it.
Check out the Bandwidth Calculator to see how much bandwidth you are wasting: http://www.signiant.com/bandwidth-calculator-0
4) We are happy with our satellite and terrestrial file delivery services. Yes satellite is available and is effective in reaching globally but it is very expensive … over $25/GB for a file transferred. Same with Terrestrial Services – around $25/GB plus the cost of the bandwidth. Compare this with the cost of about a $1/GB for sending files over your network and the public internet. We regularly see companies shipping 200GB packages – shipping using satellite or a terrestrial service would be $5,000 vs. just $200 worth of bandwidth on your own network.
5) We are happy with our manual processes. Everyone is probably already trained on the current processes – the trains run on time and when problems are encountered, people know what to do. However, everyone time someone touches a file or needs to manually take action – it costs money. Automating tasks and especially multi-sequences tasks can save a tremendous amount of money and people’s time. Have your people interact with the exceptions – not the processes that are operating flawlessly. As one of our partners told me, his directive is pretty clear, “make more money, and don’t make any more people”.
6) We don’t plan to monetize our content internationally, digitally or non-linearly. Many companies main business today is not syndication of content – digitally, internationally or VOD. In 2008, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said, “We can’t trade analog dollars for digital pennies”. Well – the world is changing and Mr. Zucker would be the first to tell you to jump on board. Companies like Apple and NBC have already created $B revenue streams from Digital Distribution. It is not too early to start and only Signiant can scale to meet your business needs.
7) We don’t need to collaborate with other people globally. Many organizations are self contained and only collaborate to produce content with people in their own building. However, increasingly worldwide collaboration for editing, dubbing, special effects or just review is the rule not the exception – even small marketing organizations need to collaborate with people all over the world. If you are producing content – chances are you either are or will need to exchange files on deadline with someone across town, across the country or on another continent.
We don’t need to get content in from the field, remote shoots or from users quickly, reliably and securely and our clients are happy to have us send them tapes. In some cases, content is produced, edited and packaged at a single site. There is no need to get the news in from where it is happening, there is no location shoot or content that a citizen journalist captured and wants to upload to you and you have no desire to deal with user generated content. However, more and more content that is captured remotely professionally or on a cell phone has great value and getting that content from that device can provide the jump on your competitor who is vying for the same content.
9) We have complete visibility to where our files are at all times and when they arrive at their destination. Some small manual operations where a single person is responsible for all file transfers – it is easy to know what files have arrived, what files are in transit and what files still need to be moved. But for almost any organization, where more than one person is involved in the creation, management or distribution of content – being able to track all of the files, the formats and their destinations quickly becomes a logistics nightmare. Oh, has anyone ever called and said the file never got there? Try proving a file has arrived without a signed digital signature.
10) We are happy with the method and speed we can delivery big media files around the world. Whether it is a 15MB Power Point File, 50 MB viral video, 500MB iTune file or 5GB Digital Daily – no one can make this claim. Moving big files over networks to meet business deadlines is a problem we all face – whether you are using email, ftp or any other application. If you are trying to move many large files to many locations – well the problems grows from a simple file movement problem to a logistics nightmare. A problem Signiant can help you with … just ask many of the companies that we are managing the movement and transformation of millions of files to hundreds of destinations.
Has anyone in your organization muttered any of the above? We didn’t think so.
