Avid Technology, Inc. has announced the immediate availability of its new Avid Unity shared-storage solutions: the Avid Unity LANshare 4.2, Unity MediaNetwork 4.2, and Avid Unity ISIS 1.1 systems. Announced at NAB2006, all of the latest versions of Avid's shared-storage systems offer significant increases in storage, doubling the capacity of Avid Unity LANshare and MediaNetwork systems, and tripling the capacity of the Avid Unity ISIS system. The Avid Unity family also supports Avid Interplay—the world's first nonlinear workflow engine (scheduled to ship in Q3 2006) and Avid's Open Storage Initiative (OSI), which enables customers to run virtually any third party Mac OS X or Windows XP content creation system, including nonlinear editing, compositing, 3D animation, and script writing tools, on Avid shared storage.
"Whether deploying high-resolution workflows or pursuing broader team-based collaboration, our customers need more capacity, flexibility, and functionality with their storage systems," said Andy Dale, senior product manager for storage and networking at Avid. "While many broadcasters and post facilities are primarily Avid-based for editorial, they also want to tie other creative applications to their storage network to maximize efficiency. Our new Avid Unity product line addresses headroom and connectivity better than ever before with massive capacity increases, support for third party creative applications, and support for Avid Interplay, Avid's nonlinear workflow engine. With all of these new capabilities, we're looking forward to expanding our shared-storage customer base—within Avid content creation environments and beyond."
The new Avid Unity systems offer new file system innovations to deliver increased performance, and 500 GB drives to boost overall capacity. Highlights of specific systems include:
- Avid Unity LANshare system version 4.2: provides turnkey realtime collaboration with twice the storage capacity—up to 8 terabytes (TB)—of previous versions using the new LANserver LP (Low Profile), an integrated storage and server device featuring 16-drives in a three-rack unit (3U) size. All Version 4.2 systems offer Fibre Channel and Ethernet connectivity. Pricing for Avid Unity LANshare systems starts at $24,995 USMSRP.
- Avid Unity MediaNetwork system version 4.2: offers twice the storage capacity—up to 40 TB—of previous versions using the new three-rack unit (3U) MEDIArray LP array with 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity for mid- to large-size facilities handling multi-stream, high-resolution projects in a realtime collaborative environment. Pricing starts at $57,215 USMSRP.
- Avid Unity ISIS system version 1.1: offers three times the storage capacity—up to an unprecedented 192 TB—of previous versions, with support for 150 active users, compatibility with Mac OS X (Tiger) and Windows XP workstations, and the extraordinary resiliency of Avid's distributed intelligence architecture for 24/7 availability. Pricing starts at $106,995 USMSRP.
