intelligent

The pandemic panicked many companies into committing to temporary sub-optimal solutions , but Emperor had had the foresight to prepare . “ While we couldn ’ t have predicted anything like the impact of a pandemic , we had begun the process of moving to a more agile , cost-effective and time-efficient working environment in the cloud ,” explained Noel O ’ Connor , Emperor Founder and Creative Director . “ We ran standalone servers in our office locations , and while we could connect to them , we knew we needed something faster for the long-term .

“ Before COVID , we had looked into Microsoft Azure but found the user experience was not a lot different to what we were doing with our Virtual Private Network ( VPN ), so we shelved the idea . When the pandemic hit , we moved to work from home and continued using the VPN while raising the search for an easy-to-use , high-speed , cloud-based server to the top of the agenda .”

Business challenge

Pre-pandemic , the challenge facing Emperor was to find a faster , seamless solution for access to files across its national and international hubs . With employees working remotely from home the issue was exacerbated .

“ We had access to our data , but it could be unacceptably slow , which made it very difficult to perform some tasks ,” O ’ Connor explained . “ Our team had to download media locally to work on them efficiently . That ’ s fine if it ’ s a word document , but invariably we are exchanging files of several GBs worth of data .”

For the design and publication of marketing and communications materials and annual financial reports , Emperor works predominantly in the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and , in particular , with large InDesign files . Creating a PDF from InDesign files comprised of multiple high-resolution , highcolour fidelity JPEG , TIFF , PNG and other graphics formats with links typically involving several gigabits of data . Sharing this core asset over VPN , either internally or for client review and approval , proved very challenging .

“ To create a PDF proof , you have to have all the links accessible and doing this over VPN was extremely painful ,” O ’ Connor explained . “ VPN is really dependent on the available broadband connection , which varies across our teams and can be compromised when working from home by other users sharing the connection .”

The company had a very structured and disciplined set of processes for the studio operation . This was designed to support project teams of half a dozen or more members with access to the same set of assets regardless of whether they were in the UK or in a different time zone .

“ Unanimously , we thought LucidLink was really fast and something we could benefit from ,” O ’ Connor said .

Situation post-move

O ’ Connor said : “ When we moved out of the office , we did so overnight . As well as setting up numerous VPN connections , we also set up workstations on-site that were connected to our network , allowing users to remote into our studio environment and carry out certain workflows as if they were in the office . This solution undoubtedly helped but was still clunky and cumbersome for users .”

The team was also acutely conscious of the potential for file and version management issues and implemented systems and procedures to avoid this as specific files and images had to be worked on locally .

“ We operate out of five studios – which at the time was effectively 230 studios , as we were all working from home and had to maintain a tight regime to ensure the integrity of our data and backups . For all these reasons , we needed an overhaul of our basic connectivity ,” O ’ Connor said . “ But that seems like a long time ago . It ’ s amazing how fast you adapt to change , and the team is working so fluently on LucidLink now it ’ s as if they ’ ve forgotten how frustrating and time-consuming life was before .”

Previous page : Noel O ’ Connor , Emperor Founder and Creative Director

WE HAD ACCESS TO OUR DATA , BUT IT COULD BE UNACCEPTABLY SLOW , WHICH MADE IT VERY DIFFICULT TO PERFORM SOME TASKS .