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StorNext Shared Workflow Speeds Pre-Media Processing for Brown Printing Company

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 May 2006, 09:02 CDT

Using solutions from Advanced Digital Information Corporation (NASDAQ: ADIC), the leader in Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions for the open systems market, Brown Printing Company is able to increase the speed and efficiency of its printing operations by tenfold.

Brown Printing Company is one of the largest magazine printers in the United States, and prints more than 700 different titles for 400 clients including Sports Illustrated and the New England Journal of Medicine. The pre-media side of printing, where raw files are prepared to be turned into printing plates, is a high-performance, workflow-oriented environment that challenges conventional storage technology. To address this challenge, Brown Printing Company installed a SAN running ADIC's StorNext storage management software under Dalim Software's pre-press workflow tools. The new system optimized Brown's pre-media processes and dramatically reduced file production times.

For every issue of a title to be produced, dozens of files as large as 100MB are downloaded over the Internet to the printing facility. Previously, the pre-media group organized these files and processed them using multiple servers where the primary data storage was direct-attached to a master server. During this process each file had to be moved to the different processing servers serially.

According to Lee Edberg, Central PreMedia Manager for Brown Printing, "Processing all the files one by one kept the operation slow, file transfers were filled with bottlenecks, there was no real redundancy, and there was a lot of manual intervention."

To alleviate these bottlenecks, Brown Printing decided to upgrade its entire pre-media system -- storage, processing CPUs, and workflow -- all at once, because the company realized the core of the system was the storage itself. Brown Printing soon installed SAN technology, a central RAID array and ADIC's StorNext data management software, which gave all the processing servers common access to a large central storage pool.

Edberg adds, "We evaluated other options, but decided that we required SAN performance because of the file sizes we were dealing with and the amount of processing we did. We selected ADIC's StorNext software to provide shared access to the files on the SAN. We liked the performance, the fact that it could provide access to multiple operating environments. We already used ADIC tape libraries for backup, so ADIC was a logical choice."

In Brown's new pre-media system, StorNext lets all their different processing programs share the files transparently at Fibre Channel speeds. All the servers can access all the files so if any server goes down, other servers can pick up the load and keep the production going. StorNext's support of multiple operating systems is giving Brown the flexibility they need.

Taking advantage of the new storage infrastructure is Brown's other major upgrade, a suite of automated workflow, file, and processing management software tools from Dalim Software. According to Edberg, "The combination of SAN technology, StorNext software and DALiM TWiST has been very powerful for us. It has given Brown Printing a business advantage, and we use it for all of our pre-media processing to get jobs done faster. Before, it took multiple people numerous hours to prepare a typical set of files for printing a magazine issue. Now, one person can get the same job done in less than two hours. The resulting improvement in productivity means our customers get a better product delivered with faster service and fewer interruptions."

A formatted copy of this case study is posted at www.adic.com/brownprinting.

About Brown Printing Company

Brown Printing Company is the fourth largest magazine printer in the United States and is nationally recognized as a high-quality, high volume printer serving America's finest magazine, catalog and insert publishers. Brown Printing Company is a long-term industry leader printing over 700 magazine titles and catalogs for over 400 clients with annual sales of $400 million. For more information about Brown Printing Company, visit their website at www.bpc.com.

About ADIC

Advanced Digital Information Corporation (NASDAQ: ADIC) is a leading provider of Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions to the open systems marketplace. ADIC is the world's largest supplier of automated tape systems using the drive technologies most often employed for backing up open system, client-server networks.* The Company's data management software, storage networking appliances, and disk-based backup and restore solutions provide IT managers innovative tools for storing, managing, and protecting their most valuable digital assets in a variety of disk and tape environments. ADIC storage products are available through a worldwide sales force and a global network of resellers, OEMs and partnerships, including Apple, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM, and Sun. Further information about ADIC is available at www.adic.com.

* Market Share:Gartner Dataquest, Tape Automation Systems Market Shares, 2004, F. Yale, August 2005. ADIC and Scalar are registered trademarks and Intelligent Storage is a trademark of Advanced Digital Information Corporation. All other trade or service marks mentioned in this document should be considered the property of their respective owners.

 Paige Lewis ADIC (425) 895-2660 paige.lewis@adic.com  Jason Davis Horn Group, Inc. (646) 688-0588 jdavis@horngroup.com

SOURCE: ADIC

Source: MARKET WIRE

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