Avid Unveils Cloud Strategy with Launch of New Off

LAS VEGAS, April 22, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AVID CONNECT --  Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID ) , a leading global media technology provider for the creation, distribution, and monetization of media assets for global media organizations, enterprise users, and individual creative professionals, today announced new cloud innovations for the  Avid MediaCentral® Platform  and its comprehensive suite of industry-leading tools and workflow solutions.  The breakthrough advancements herald the greatest expansion of Avid Everywhere™ since its launch nearly four years ago. The Avid MediaCentral Platform is now cloud-enabled, and can be deployed on premises, in a private data center, or the public cloud, providing everyone in the media industry with the ability to create, distribute, and manage content more efficiently and profitably using one common platform. The move also enables several of the company’s comprehensive set of creative tools and workflow solutions to be deployed in the cloud along with the Avid MediaCentral Platform.

“The media industry is going through unprecedented change, with more content being created than ever before,” said Louis Hernandez Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Avid. “With staggering increases in content consumption and exponential growth in distribution platforms, technology budgets have not kept pace, creating relentless pressure for operational efficiency. To help media organizations meet these challenges head on, we’re extending the Avid MediaCentral Platform and many of our industry-leading tools into the cloud, giving our clients more agility, flexibility, and efficiencies as their business needs evolve.”

Mr. Hernandez, Jr. continued, “We’ve designed our cloud offerings to be complementary to what our clients may already have deployed on premises today—allowing them to just add cloud-deployed tools, workflows and services as they need them, leveraging the investment they’ve already made. We believe the cloud will usher in an exciting new era for the media industry, opening up new operational possibilities and strategic business opportunities. And with Avid, our clients can begin this journey to the cloud in their own way and at their own pace.”

Together with a newly announced cloud alliance with Microsoft, Avid is leading the media industry’s ability to handle full-scale media production in the cloud. By extending the Avid MediaCentral Platform to the cloud on Microsoft Azure, media organizations now have the complete flexibility to create, distribute, and monetize their content using the deployment type that works best for them. Regardless of their deployment model—on premises, private data center, public cloud, or hybrid—media organizations of every type and size will have the same user experience, workflow power, speed, efficiency, and collaboration capabilities they’ve come to rely on from Avid. Further, existing MediaCentral customers now have an easy on-ramp to the cloud, leveraging the investment they’ve already made.

“Avid really changed the game with Avid Everywhere, showing the industry what the possibilities could be with a comprehensive media platform,” said Mohamed Abuagla, CTO and CIO of Al Jazeera Media Network. “We are delighted to be collaborating with Avid on the first hybrid cloud implementation of the MediaCentral platform across our international newsroom network. We will be pioneering cloud-based newsroom workflows with the goal to create a connected, open, global newsroom environment. As we move into a cloud-based future, we are pleased to have Avid at our side to help us navigate this important journey.”

With everything necessary for media production accessible in the cloud, media professionals can turn around higher quality work, faster and more economically.

Core Components of Avid MediaCentral in the Cloud

• Hosted Applications— With cloud-enabled Avid client applications, software can be licensed to run on premises, in a private cloud data center, and in the public cloud for deployment flexibility and increased utilization.

•  Avid MediaCentral | Cloud UX — This new web-based application offers a completely redesigned and highly responsive user experience for the MediaCentral Platform, making it super-fast and intuitive for anyone to search, browse, access, edit, collaborate, and publish content from any workstation, laptop, or mobile device.

• Cloud-enabled Media Suite— Avid Media Suite applications, including Interplay® | Production , Interplay | MAM , iNEWS ® , and Social Media Hub , as well as Maestro ™ and 4Designer , are being cloud-enabled with license options to run on-premises, in a private data center, and in the public cloud.

• Cloud Media Services— To give MediaCentral Platform users even greater efficiency, Avid is introducing new media services, including:

• Unified Avid Dialogue Search™ service uses exclusive phonetic indexing technology to enable keyword searches that span diverse libraries of content
• Avid Illuminate™ automatically verifies captions, video description, and languages in content for fast and accurate broadcast compliance and quality assurance

• Infrastructure on Demand— The new MediaCentral Infrastructure Management Layer enables organizations to scale resources, add new capabilities, and optimize their storage, computing power, and bandwidth across their entire enterprise.

• Cloud-enabled Connectivity Toolkit— With its open architecture and Connectivity Toolkit APIs, MediaCentral makes it easy to connect third-party Alliance Partner tools, technologies, and services to the platform to streamline workflows.

• Flexible Licensing Options— For greater business agility, Avid is now offering Enterprise Agreements with flexible Enterprise Licensing, enabling media organizations to enjoy economies of scale by aggregating spend across departments and sites.

Availability Avid MediaCentral Platform is currently available for certain cloud-based deployments, with further innovations to broaden and simplify cloud deployments coming in late 2017. For more information, visit Avid.com.

About Avid Through  Avid Everywhere™ , Avid delivers the most open and efficient media platform, connecting content creation with collaboration, asset protection, distribution and consumption. Avid’s preeminent customer community uses Avid’s comprehensive tools and workflow solutions to create, distribute and monetize the most watched, loved and listened to media in the world—from prestigious and award-winning feature films, to popular television shows, news programs and televised sporting events, and celebrated music recordings and live concerts. With the most flexible deployment and pricing options, Avid’s industry-leading solutions include Pro Tools®, Media Composer®, Avid NEXIS™, Interplay®, ProSet™ and RealSet™, Maestro™, PlayMaker™, and Sibelius®. For more information about Avid solutions and services, visit  www.avid.com , connect with Avid on  Facebook ,  Instagram , Twitter , YouTube ,  LinkedIn , or subscribe to  Avid Blogs .

© 2017 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Avid, the Avid logo, Avid Dialogue Search, Avid Everywhere, Avid Illuminate, Avid Nexis, iNEWS, Interplay, Maestro, MediaCentral, Media Composer, Pro Tools, and Sibelius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. The Interplay name is used with the permission of the Interplay Entertainment Corp. which bears no responsibility for Avid products. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subject to change without notice.

PR Contact: Avid Amy Paladino amy.paladino@avid.com +1 617-733-5121