TTS Group solves Mac connectivity challenge with Acronis Files ConnectPosted by Maria Kurganova on March 19th, 2021 BUSINESS BACKGROUND TTS Group Limited is one of the UK's leading suppliers of high quality educational resources for schools and parents. Its award-winning products are extensively researched and commonly sourced from advisors, teachers, practitioners, and many others, whose number one priority is children. The result is exceptional, leading the company to win the Queen's Award for outstanding achievement in international trade in 2012. TTS is so passionate about childrens' well-being that it formed the TTS Charity Foundation in 2008 to help provide a better education and life for children, both in the UK and abroad, who are less fortunate. BUSINESS CHALLENGES TTS's key challenge was for the Design Team, consisting of 9 Mac users among 190 Windows users and 9 servers all running Windows server OS to access enormous amounts of data. This data is comprised of many terabytes of photos, icons, Adobe files, and TTS product images used for the creation of thousands of catalog pages, posters, and packaging designs. These products and advertisements are aimed at attracting education professionals. All of this mission-critical marketing data is stored on a server running Windows Server 2012. As James Ledger, Support Engineer at TTS Groups says, "Our design team had to constantly search the drives for specific images of the relevant product they were working on." "The mounted Windows server's shared drives were very poor on performance for the Macs. It took a couple minutes just to show the folders/files within the drive and sometimes up to 10 minutes to search for specific files within the folders. At times it didn't bring back any results at all, while Windows users could see/search these files easily. Due to these issues, users would often copy files locally to their Macs, edit them, and copy them back to the shared drive. They could be working on these images for days at a time, so if anything failed locally on their Macs (HDD), a lot of work could be lost - impacting deadlines, product delivery, and ultimately sales, which was simply not acceptable." WHY ACRONIS Once Acronis Files Connect was put on the server and mounted as the shared Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) - which was easy - it enabled the simple cataloging of files and the design team had instant access to their files. Finding files on the AFP mounts is now practically instant. The team can now also work directly from the AFP share and not have to copy anything to their local Macs. As James Ledger said, "Even a few of our Windows users say they wish their folders and search functions worked that quickly." He added, "Acronis Files Connect has allowed our design team to work with greater efficiency and help avert the disastrous consequences of Mac hardware failures, resulting in hours of saved time and happy Mac users." KEY BENEFITS * Seamless integration of Macs with Windows file servers * Fast and accurate search results: 2-3 seconds vs 10 minutes * Working directly on the shared drive reduced the risk of lost data * Overall performance and productivity greatly improved * Happier working environment for Mac users ABOUT ACRONIS FILES CONNECT Acronis Files Connect has been the leader in solving Mac/Windows integration issues for over 15 years. Acronis Files Connect addresses file corruptions, slow searches, and other incompatibilities when accessing Windows file and print servers, and NAS devices, from a Mac. At its core, Acronis Files Connect is a Windows-based AFP service that enables Macs to connect to files residing on a Windows server using their native Apple Filing Protocol. Additionally, using optional Network Reshare features, Macs can use AFP to access files on other Windows servers and NAS devices, through a single Acronis Files Connect server. Visit https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/files-connect/ to learn more about its features and capabilities. ABOUT ACRONIS Acronis sets the standard for cyber protection and hybrid cloud storage through its innovative backup, anti-ransomware, disaster recovery, storage, and enterprise file sync and share solutions. Enhanced by AI-based Active Protection technology, blockchain-based authentication and a unique hybrid-cloud architecture, Acronis protects all data in any environment, including physical, virtual, cloud, mobile workloads and applications. Founded in Singapore in 2003, today the company is trusted by more than 5 million consumers and 500,000 businesses worldwide, including 79 of the top 100 most valuable brands. Find more at www.acronis.comLike it? Share it! More by this author |