Solutions

ELEMENTS in Hybrid Cloud Environments

What is hybrid cloud and how can it improve your workflows?

Hybrid cloud is a concept that combines public cloud, private cloud and on-premise infrastructure to create a flexible and cost-efficient environment. Combining different kinds of storage technologies allows you to enjoy the benefits of these individual technologies such as high performance and capacity, without the drawbacks that are typically associated with each individual technology – such as high maintenance cost or infrastructure investments. A hybrid cloud environment can also bring teams together, no matter what their location is, allow for secure content exchange and collaboration, and it can even allow you to dynamically scale storage capacity and performance to meet your current needs.

The efficiency of the hybrid cloud environment is highly dependent on the management user interface and the selection of tools and features it offers, and this is where the ELEMENTS platform truly excels.

Cloud integrations

Opening new possibilities

Since day one, the ELEMENTS platform and the tools it offers have been designed with cloud in mind. This is why our systems make it easy to seamlessly incorporate cloud solutions into your workflow. This approach also allows you to use one unifying interface to access and manage the high-performance, on-premise storage together with a number of cloud storage solutions. Advanced tools such as the Media Library, the ELEMENTS Client, intuitive permissions management layer and our powerful Automation Engine save work and allow you to harness the full potential of Hybrid Cloud, even without any technical knowledge.

Cloud becomes active

Much more than just a bucket

The ELEMENTS Client, our intuitive connection manager, lets users mount cloud workspaces directly on their workstation. This feature makes the cloud as easy to reach and use as a regular shared storage mount and allows for far more intuitive access to the cloud-stored data compared to the usual access through a browser. The ELEMENTS Client also brings the benefit of permission management and allows you to decide who gets to mount what. Connecting the Media Library to your cloud bucket also lets you display the content and unlocks a ton of collaboration features.

Consolidate cloud solutions

Different clouds have different strengths

The ELEMENTS platform allows you to enjoy the individual benefits of a number of different cloud services at once. For example, when supported by services such as Elastic Block Storage, ELEMENTS can provide you with the highest performance cloud-based shared storage. Pair this ultrafast solution with cloud workstations to achieve the kind of performance that was until now possible only with cutting-edge on-premise storage. At the same time Backblaze B2 or Microsoft Azure Blob can be used for the bulk of the storage capacity at a low cost. This kind of flexible cloud utilization allows you to move your whole workflow to the cloud and greatly reduce infrastructure investments.

Connecting production sites

Manage media over multiple locations

The ELEMENTS Media Library is our advanced browser-based asset management and collaboration platform that can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud. Imagine a powerful, online media platform that can connect any number of production facilities and displays the chosen, locally-stored media. Users with sufficient access permissions can easily browse the content and transfer it between sites. These features connect global teams and provide a unified collaboration and management platform.

Through the utilization of accelerated transfer technologies, the ELEMENTS platform allows you to easily perform extremely fast data transfer between sites. This feature allows you to send files over the internet up to 5 times faster!

Powering efficiency

Get the most out of the cloud with a powerful toolset

ELEMENTS systems offer a wide range of tools and features which enable you to fully utilize the potential of cloud technologies. Aside from being a versatile content management platform, the Media Library also contains an integrated Rough-cut Editor that lets users create editing timelines that can then be imported into an NLE of your choice. Also, with a single click in the ELEMENTS panel in Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, users can reuse the Media Library proxies for offline editing – enabling a smooth editing experience without wasting time on proxy creation. When your editing project is finished, pressing the same button will relink the media back to high-res footage.

Committed to media workflows

Your partner in pioneering the future

Cloud technologies have the potential to greatly improve or even revolutionize just about any digital use-case out there. We recognize the importance of this technology and are fully committed to bringing its benefits to the Media & Entertainment industry. Using an ELEMENTS hybrid cloud environment will allow you to execute the most advanced media workflows available and will give you a powerful and flexible platform that can easily evolve to satisfy your future needs.

Cloud technologies allow us to build workflows that were a thing of science fiction just a few years ago.

André Kamps, CEO of ELEMENTS

Tech Specs

Supported cloud providers

AWS Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2 and more

Media Library access

Internally via VPN / Cloud-based Worker node / Via dedicated on-premise Worker node with DMZ protection

Cloud workstation access

Via ELEMENTS Satellite – low-latency remote editing tool

Cloud workspace mounting

Via the ELEMENTS Client on macOS and Windows

Platform

ELEMENTS Web UI, including the Media Library, Automation Engine, project and permission management features is accessible through a web browser. Supported browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari

ELEMENTS Client support: Windows, macOS (Intel), macOS (Silicon), Linux, RedHat, Debian

 

FAQ

Yes. Beside allowing you to mount workspaces located on the ELEMENTS storage, the ELEMENTS Client also allows you to mount cloud workspaces. This feature lets you access the files in the cloud in an intuitive and familiar manner – through the macOS Finder or Windows Explorer. Cloud workspaces however are not meant for remote editing. This is due to the low latency requirements of the modern NLEs which usually can’t be met by a typical cloud connection.

Yes you can, thanks to the Media Library’s extensive cloud support. Your locally-hosted Media Library can have cloud-based media roots, which allows your team to use one tool to collaborate on and work with the footage that is on your on-premise storage and in the cloud, in a productive and secure manner. The Media Library can also be purely cloud-based.
This allows your company to enjoy all the cloud benefits such as availability, security, flexible scaling and can allow your company to implement full cloud-workflows.

A cloud bucket is a great way to store your footage, but it comes with a caveat, providing only rudimentary access – uploading, downloading and seeing a list of stored files is basically all you get. The Media Library adds a powerful management and collaboration layer on top of it. You can use it to preview, share and manage the footage, as well as communicate with the team and coordinate work.

Today, with the editing workstations and high-resolution footage most often found on-premise, hybrid cloud environments still make the most sense. They provide the best features of both the cloud and the on-premise world. However, the flexibility of the ELEMENTS platform means that you can switch to end-to-end cloud workflow at anytime.

A hybrid cloud environment can connect any number of production facilities to the company’s cloud. For example: a cloud-based Media Library can display the content that is located on the local storage of all connected facilities. If authorised through access permissions, the user can “pull” the footage from any connected site with the single click of a button.
As the cloud-based Media Library doesn’t need to have the high-resolution footage, just the lightweight proxies, the storage capacity requirement of the cloud subscription is kept to a minimum.

Yes they can. Cloud-deployed ELEMENTS Worker can support you in many ways. It can help by dynamically scaling the processing power of the Media Library in moments of high demand for proxy creation. This helps the Media Library to present the footage faster upon upload. Cloud-based Worker can also be used to facilitate accelerated file transfer, allowing you to send files over the internet much faster.

The ELEMENTS platform allows you to perform extremely fast data transfer between sites. Simply choose the files, or even schedule a transfer job and enjoy amazing transfer speeds. This is achieved through the utilization of accelerated transfer technologies which allow you to send files over the internet up to 5 times faster!

Glossar

COBIT

COBIT ist ein international anerkanntes Rahmenwerk für das Management und die Governance von Informationstechnologie. Es bietet ein umfassendes Regelwerk von Prinzipien, Praktiken und analytischen Instrumenten und Modellen zur Steuerung der unternehmensweiten IT.