IMG Studios upgrade with Dell Powerscale
Read about how Trustmarque upgraded an aging system to deliver game-changing performance for global sporting archive content at IMG with Dell Powerscale.
Background
Creating a valuable connection between a sport and its fan base is critical. IMG Studios business puts fans at the heart of the action, leveraging best-in-class technology and ideas to optimise how audiences engage with sport.
That’s why Trustmarque has nurtured the relationship with IMG over many years to cover different technology areas within their business such as storage, software, professional services, as well as managed services. We are IMG’s trusted partner, consistently delivering and always ensuring excellent service, as Steven Purewall, SVP Global IT & Head of Infrastructure Services, knows:
“I don’t change vendors unless they have let me down, so the fact that I have been with Trustmarque for 15 years is a testament to how they treat us as a company and how we value them as a vendor.”
It is this mutual understanding and collaborative spirit that has allowed Trustmarque to nurture a long-standing partnership with IMG Studios, working closely across multiple technology areas of their business, including storage, software, Microsoft solutions, professional services, and managed services. Through collaboration and facilitating their cutting-edge technology choices, we’ve helped IMG Studios innovate and elevate the fan experience, ensuring they stay at the forefront of sports engagement. We are IMG’s trusted partner, consistently delivering and always ensuring excellent service, as Steven Purewall, SVP Global IT & Head of Infrastructure Services, knows:
“I don’t change vendors unless they have let me down, so the fact that I have been with Trustmarque for 15 years is a testament to how they treat us as a company and how we value them as a vendor.”
The Challenge
In 2022, IMG sought the services of their technology partner, Trustmarque to provide a resilient, high-performing, unstructured data platform needed to house 4.5PB of data for the Premier League Football Broadcast and Archive. Requiring more performance-based technology to replace their aging system for a much larger capacity, was also met the need to broadcast in 4k and 8k to various countries around the globe. 8K affects storage because it dramatically increases both the size and volume of data that needs to be stored, managed, and accessed in real-time, requiring more advanced storage technologies to handle the performance and capacity demands efficiently.
After more than a decade of collaboration with IMG, we successfully secured the contract after a highly competitive RFP (request for proposal) and workshop process and helped IMG seamlessly migrate to new infrastructure and continue delivering the power of technology.
The Solution
After a thorough market review and RFP process, Dell Powerscale was selected as the solution of choice. Being a Dell Technologies Titanium partner, the Trustmarque team, led by Senior Client Manager, Chris Barnes, was able to present a compelling case for the solution and subsequent transformation,
“Our value is our deep experience in this arena, the marketplace and really understanding the key things IMG require this platform to do.”
Chosen for a multitude of reasons, and most notably its market leading technology, underpinned by ease of operation, the solution has key integration. Dell Powerscale dovetails with IMG’s key media workflow applications such as EVS and Premier Pro as well as protection from Ransomware using the imbedded Ransomware Defender Software Platform, making it a robust and reliable upgrade at IMG.
Due to the business-critical nature of the technology solution, scoping the project and delivering the end result had to be precise. As part of this process, Trustmarque also undertook all of the professional services work in-house, performing the critical data migration, to ensure the new system is live before the new football season begins at the end of the summer.
The Outcome
IMG now boasts a market leading platform for their ‘crown jewel’ workload to ensure high performance and scalable infrastructure to meet their ever-increasing demands. This system is business critical, and has given the IT team greater user experience overall and easier day to day management, as Ben Zielinski, Broadcast IT Lead, explains
“The migration was done very well, and we knew the engineers from previous projects so we trusted them to deliver”. Working alongside Trustmarque technical experts, Ben and the team experience no downtime or outages during the process: “it was a seamless delivery with no impact to the end user.”
The data protection elements of the solution provide advanced protection against ransomware attacks, ensuring the integrity and availability of IMG’s critical data. This robust security layer reduces downtime risks and potential data loss, offering enhanced resilience and peace of mind. The combination of these features makes the overall Trustmarque solution a highly reliable, secure, and future-proof upgrade for IMG’s operations, keeping fans all over the world, at the heart of the action, leveraging best-in-class services and technology.
About Trustmarque
Trustmarque is a leading Dell Technologies Titanium partner due to our determination to modernise datacentres across the UK. Our highly qualified datacentre solution architects can guide your business on your biggest data challenges, whether that’s managing the explosion of unstructured data or upgrading traditional infrastructure.
From managing data-intensive environments to help modernise ageing infrastructure, we can support your transition to a future-proofed datacentre. The result: confidence in your infrastructure and limitless growth potential.
