Avid Now Shipping NEXIS and Delivers the Industry’s First and Only Software-defined Storage Platform

Avid® today announced that Avid NEXIS™, the industry’s first and only software-defined storage platform specifically designed for storing and managing media, is now available. The award-winning platform enables fully virtualized storage so media organizations can adjust storage capacity mid-project, without disrupting workflows. Powered by the Avid MediaCentral™ Platform, Avid NEXIS delivers unrivaled media storage flexibility, scalability, and control for both Avid-based and third-party workflows. Designed to serve the smallest production teams as powerfully as the largest media enterprises, it’s the only storage platform built with the flexibility to grow with customers at every stage of their business – fulfilling a key tenet of Avid Everywhere™.

“We are really excited to announce that Avid NEXIS is shipping. Now, media professionals and creative teams can share and access media assets from everywhere, while having the flexibility to adjust capacity as projects dictate, without disrupting their work,” said Dana Ruzicka, vice president and chief product officer, Avid. “Avid NEXIS delivers world-class performance, reliability and scalability, regardless of the tools that artists use.”

As a fully open storage platform, Avid NEXIS gives video professionals the performance, flexibility and efficiency of the industry’s most powerful storage solution, regardless of the editing application they choose to use. In addition to Avid Media Composer®, and Avid Pro Tools®, Avid NEXIS works with media creation applications from other leading vendors, including Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Grass Valley EDIUS, and many others.

The flexibility of Avid NEXIS has attracted significant customer interest since it was announced at the 2016 NAB Show. “We are thrilled about the versatility of the new Avid NEXIS storage platform,” said Jon Mauldin, vice president Technology at FotoKem NLS. “Avid has done a great job of adding in the flexibility needed for the many different types of productions that access a single storage system. We are very excited to offer this new technology to our clients.”

The software-defined storage architecture of Avid NEXIS allows customers to select components that meet their current needs, and easily expand storage capacity and bandwidth as their business grows. Avid NEXIS is also the only scale-out storage solution that enables customers to dynamically tune the system to ensure that high-priority workflows always have the capacity, performance and data protection levels they require. Customers can give critical projects maximum performance, while throttling back on less critical workflows. This ability lets teams react quickly to changes, adjusting performance and protection levels to match the needs of a project at any stage in the workflow.

The unique modularity of Avid NEXIS enables teams to mix and match storage engines and elastically scale capacity from as little as 20 TB to over 1.4 PB in a single system, without any interruption in service or down time. All Avid NEXIS systems are powered by the Avid NEXIS | FS file system, so customers experience consistent performance, reliability, and protection, regardless of configuration size.

The Avid NEXIS family includes several new storage engine options, designed to meet any scalability and density requirement:

• Avid NEXIS | E4—High-density integrated storage engine
• Avid NEXIS | E2—Small-footprint integrated storage engine
• System Director Appliance—Increases Avid NEXIS scale and redundancy
• Media Pack—Pack of 10 drives with 20 TB or 60 TB of storage
• Redundant Controller—High-availability option for Avid NEXIS systems
• Avid NEXIS | PRO—Professional-class integrated storage engine

As the newest Avid shared storage solution, Avid NEXIS provides an easy transition path for existing users of Avid ISIS and Avid Unity shared storage solutions.