News

Avid Delivers Breakthrough Pricing for Avid Unity Family of Shared-Storage Solutions (8/6/2005)

Storage cost trends allow company to offer up to 40% savings

Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced a new pricing structure for the Avid Unity(TM) family - with up to 40% lower prices for the only shared-storage solutions on the market to offer true real-time and simultaneous sharing of frame-level media assets for collaborative postproduction and broadcast environments. The new pricing structure - which extends the accessibility of Avid's shared-storage solutions to a broader spectrum of content creators - includes Avid(R) Unity MediaNetwork systems starting at $40,000 USMSRP; new Avid Unity LANshare EX Ethernet and Fibre Channel system configurations starting at $24,995 USMSRP; and MEDIArray(TM) ZX storage devices starting at $24,995 USMSRP.

"Avid Unity products have become the most widely-used shared-storage solutions in the digital nonlinear content creation industry - with more media professionals choosing shared-storage solutions from Avid than from all of our competitors combined," said Chas Smith, vice president and general manager of Avid's video business. "At the same time, the cost of storage per terabyte continues to decline, and we are determined to continue offering best-in-class systems that lead the market in price-performance. By working closely with our suppliers, we've driven down the cost of manufacturing our storage systems, and we're pleased to introduce new competitive price points across the Avid Unity product family."

Designed specifically for storing, accessing, and sharing media in collaborative workgroup environments, the family of Avid Unity solutions offers significant advantages over standard storage area networks (SANs). Unlike other SAN-based storage offerings, Avid Unity solutions integrate seamlessly into the production process, and efficiently deliver real-time, high-resolution media to creative workstations. In addition, Avid Unity systems offer stability in demanding environments, transparency and ease of administration, flexibility and scalability, and deep interoperability with a powerful suite of complementary tools, including asset management, media transfer, transcoding, and archiving solutions.

Avid Unity systems are available in a range of 2 Gb and 4 Gb configurations, with pricing as follows:

-- Avid Unity MediaNetwork and Avid Unity for News systems - starting at $40,000 USMSRP for 2 Gb Fibre Channel connectivity and $67,000 USMSRP for 4 Gb Fibre Channel connectivity; and,
-- Avid Unity LANshare EX and LANshare EX for News systems with support for four clients - starting at $24,995 USMSRP for with Fibre Channel connectivity, and $24,995 USMSRP for Ethernet connectivity. Avid Unity storage arrays, which are components of Avid Unity MediaNetwork systems, are available at the following new price points:
-- MEDIArray ZX system - 2 Gb solution starting at $24,995 USMSRP;
-- MEDIArray ZX4 system - pricing for this 4 Gb solution, which was introduced at NAB2005, begins at $29,995 USMSRP; and
-- MEDIArray II system - 2Gb Fibre drive solution starting at $8,595 USMSRP.

All newly priced Avid Unity systems are qualified for both PC and Mac clients. Systems in 2 Gb configurations are available now. Systems in 4 Gb configurations can be ordered starting today and are expected to be available through Avid's worldwide reseller channel on June 10, 2005.

www.avid.com