CHESA Debuts Acorn Cloud Platform

CHESA, a leading US-based systems integrator supporting media supply chain environments, has announced Acorn Cloud, a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based media asset management platform. Acorn is ideal for small and midsize creative teams to create, edit, and deliver video content. This fully managed service helps lower the barrier of entry for creative teams to access collaboration tools for their remote teams.

With Acorn Cloud, video editors will have the ability to collaborate remotely using their cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. A turnkey solution, Acorn gives editors the ability to ingest, search, find, enrich and retain their assets, all within a work-in-progress platform for Adobe Premiere.

“As a recognized leader in systems integration serving the media supply chain market, we continuously innovate to fill the needs of client challenges. Our Acorn Cloud SaaS platform adds another option in CHESA’s portfolio to meet these market demands,” says Lance Hukill, chief commercial officer at CHESA.

Built for teams that need agility but lack information technology (IT) support, Acorn comes fully supported so creative teams can stay up and running, collaborate, and deliver on time. CHESA observed a need for a solution that could provide what most small to mid-size creative teams need, complete with turnkey support.

Acorn sits on CHESA’s centralized control plane called Bones and is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), LucidLink, and Quantum CatDV technologies. Entertainment companies, sports teams, the federal government, ad agencies, and corporate communications departments will have a viable alternative for their remote creative workforce.

“Quantum CatDV is increasingly deployed in the cloud thanks to our most recent round of cloud deployment features,” says Dave Clack, general manager, cloud software and analytics at Quantum. “CHESA has taken this a step further to build a high-touch, custom version of the platform for their customers that blends the power of the Quantum media asset management, collaboration, and orchestration platform with CHESA’s deep expertise to create this new service offering.”

Built for creatives

Acorn Cloud enables video editorial teams and ensures technology doesn’t get in the way. Functionality includes:

● Ingest assets in bulk
● Drag and drop ingest with camera card support *terms and conditions apply
● Live edit
● Review and edit proxies
● Scrub proxies via web user integration (UI) without opening an asset
● Log notes about each scene as virtual clips
● Create deliverables quickly for distribution platforms
● Orchestrate your workflow
● Enrich your content with extended metadata
● Search and retrieve your archived content easily to repurpose content
● Highly resilient

Hosted and managed

Creative teams have limited media IT support. They need a viable workflow that delivers the capabilities they need. Ease of use, various solutions working well together, and remaining operational are top priorities. Acorn Cloud is intuitive, fully hosted, and managed. Support features include:

● Comprehensive documentation and video library
● Intuitive user interface for rapid onboarding
● Setting up a new user is simple and easy
● Complete production asset management functionality
● Backed by industry-leading media supply chain experts
● Fully supported and monitored
● Support requests within the platform

“Our current and new clients have been looking for more solutions via SaaS to achieve faster implementation, minimized procurement and supply chain constraints, straightforward, fully managed services, and predictable cost structures,” says Jason Paquin, CEO at CHESA. “Acorn has come out of our team listening and responding to a growing need in the industry, and we are excited to bring more options to market in this space.”

Acorn cloud partners

CHESA has been serving creatives for over 30 years. The company has designed, installed, and supported media workflow systems for decades and has experience with every viable non-linear editing system (NLE), media workflow and asset management platform, and storage platform of substance. CHESA chose to collaborate with and integrate the best solutions in the market to create Acorn Cloud: AWS allows this entire workflow to be in the cloud including compute, networking, storage, and other AWS services.

“It is inspiring to see CHESA fill an important gap in the media supply chain by creating a content management solution, Acorn Cloud, for AWS customers,” says Ian McPherson, principal WW business development for media and entertainment. “From big to small organizations, content owners across the spectrum now have a scalable and usable MAM with integrated well-known AWS partners. Simplifying workflows and empowering creatives, while also removing the heavy lifting of operating and maintaining a MAM is what many organizations need right now.”

LucidLink enables Acorn Cloud to support rapid ingest of hi-res footage for immediate access anywhere. With LucidLink as part of our platform, video and audio post-production can immediately access, edit, and collaborate directly in the cloud in real-time.

“LucidLink is a standard in the media industry enabling real-time, remote collaboration on large files by users and applications from anywhere worldwide. Running on any Amazon S3-compatible object storage makes LucidLink a natural fit for Chesa’s Acorn offering,” says Scott Miller, director of global alliances and channels. “We are excited to be a part of this unique and powerful solution for the companies that want a turn-key service managed by an SI that knows how to make all the technologies work well together.”

Quantum CatDV enables Acorn Cloud to be a powerful media asset management and workflow orchestration platform that provides automation and collaboration tools for large volumes of digital media. Acorn customizes CatDV for features creative teams need.

“We are pleased to partner with a market leader like CHESA to develop a solution that combines the best technology for creative teams that need to collaborate quickly and efficiently in a remote environment,” says James Mundle, channel chief at Quantum. “Quantum is happy to support CHESA under our first managed services agreement as we look to offer additional software assets under an MSP model.”