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Higher Education Company Consolidating Wasabi Cloud Storage and Windows File Server
Company Situation
A university athletics department’s IT team supports a broad range of creative and video-centric workflows. They collaborate closely with central campus IT but focus specifically on creative technology needs like video capture, editing, storage, and review. The department handles increasing volumes of video content, supporting both standard creative projects and detailed video analytics for sports performance.
Existing Workflow
The team currently manages a hybrid storage setup with local Windows file servers fronted by scalable cloud storage (Wasabi) to accommodate growing data volumes. Their Windows users experience smooth integration with this system. For Macs, however, the Samba company used to access cloud storage has been problematic, causing persistent issues with file browsing, search, and Adobe Premiere operations—especially when files need to be restored from cloud-only storage.
Remote work, which increased due to the pandemic, has forced the team to rely on less ideal solutions such as syncing folders to Google Drive or Box to enable remote access to large video files, given the challenges of accessing Samba shares over VPN.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Mac users face ongoing, difficult-to-resolve bugs with the Samba company that degrade their ability to work efficiently with cloud-stored video assets.
Remote access to large video files through VPN and Samba shares is largely unusable, creating workflows that are cumbersome and inefficient.
The exponential growth of video data poses scalability and management challenges with existing on-prem and cloud hybrid solutions.
Budget constraints inherent to public university funding limit the viability of some creative storage solutions that come with high costs or complex licensing.
Existing tools have not fully addressed the creative team’s specialized video editing and review needs, leading to workarounds that increase complexity and risk.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers an integrated creative storage and collaboration platform that resolves the Mac compatibility issues by providing native support optimized for creative workflows. By replacing or augmenting existing Samba-based access, Shade would enable seamless, reliable access to cloud-stored video assets for all users, regardless of device or location.
Shade’s platform is designed to handle the large scale and specialized needs of creative video workflows, including direct integration with Adobe Premiere and enhanced file browsing and search capabilities. This would simplify remote access without resorting to sync-based workarounds, supporting a more robust and efficient remote and hybrid work environment.
Furthermore, Shade’s flexible cost structure and breadth of solutions provide a compelling alternative that could fit within the department’s tight budget while delivering better performance and user experience.
Benefits
- Reliable, native Mac support eliminating Samba-related issues
- Seamless remote access to large video files without VPN bottlenecks
- Scalable storage management tailored for growing video content needs
- Enhanced integration with creative tools like Adobe Premiere
- Cost-effective solution aligned with public university budget constraints
- Simplified workflows reducing the need for syncing or workaround solutions
- Improved collaboration and asset accessibility across creative and analytics teams