Safeway Builds Cross-Platform Production Environment on Omneon Storage System

Omneon, Inc. announced that Safeway Inc., a Fortune 50 company and one of the largest food and drug retailers in North America, is using the Omneon MediaGrid active storage system to support a cross-platform shared edit environment incorporating Avid Media Composer and Apple Final Cut Pro editing systems. By providing consolidated storage for production and supporting a variety of workflow applications, the MediaGrid system simplifies the growth of Safeway’s production operations and reduces the cost of accessing and managing content across the facility.

"We selected the Omneon MediaGrid active storage system for our operations because it allows us to consolidate our media storage while we add Final Cut Pro systems to our Avid environment," said Dan Pryor, vice president of corporate communications at Safeway. "In this role the MediaGrid system supports a true end-to-end workflow, with content remaining on the system from ingest through post-production to distribution. The fact that the Omneon storage system directly supports our existing transcoding, IPTV, and streaming applications also is a big plus. Now, when we add more storage for content, it’s a single upgrade and the entire facility benefits."

The MediaGrid system has given Safeway a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solution for enhancing its Avid storage while adding Final Cut Pro seats, with all editors pulling from a single pool of content and working within a shared project environment. The company works with XDCAM systems and maintains file-based operations right through to streaming or broadcast of content. The company produces content – ranging from in-store pieces for shoppers to live and recorded corporate and human resources messages to training and safety presentations – for two full-time broadcast channels, two streaming channels, and VOD services for more than 1,750 stores and over 197,000 employees.

The MediaGrid system’s open interoperability has enabled Safeway to integrate it with a variety of other applications that are critical to the company’s media delivery and communications. The Omneon system acts as storage for Digital Rapids transcoding, Cisco Application and Content Networking System (ACNS), Helius IPTV distribution, Qumu video webcasting, and Microsoft Windows Media Server. As Safeway scales up its MediaGrid active storage system, the company will realize improvements not only in capacity, but also in the bandwidth available to support these and other applications or clients. Because content remains on the MediaGrid system, there is no need to move high-resolution content across the network from device to device, or to manage the transfer of content in relation to other work being performed on the network.

"Most people wouldn’t guess that Safeway is operating as a broadcaster and a post production facility with all the same quality and reliability expectations. The company’s business model demands that it invest in flexible, scalable, and cost-effective systems to support this file-based workflow," said Geoff Stedman, Omneon senior vice president for products and markets. "With support for multiple edit platforms and straightforward interoperability with other applications, the MediaGrid system is a great fit for corporate clients, such as Safeway, seeking to create and distribute quality content affordably and efficiently."

Safeway became aware of Omneon’s unique cross-platform edit storage solution through the Communications Media Management Association (CMMA), of which Pryor is the president. The group is the premier professional organization for people who manage the creation, distribution, and utilization of communications media for corporations, non-profits, government agencies, and educational institutions.