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.