Immediate Media Migrates Workflows to LucidLink

About Immediate Media

Immediate Media Co is a UK-based media company that owns and operates some of the best-loved brands in the UK, including Radio Times, BBC Good Food, olive magazine, and BBC Gardeners’ World magazine. Immediate Media attracts over 60 million passionate global consumers through world-class content and innovative new products and services.

Immediate has offices in London, Bristol, Nottingham, and Manchester, with over 1000 people working across print, digital, audio, and video.

The challenge of remote creative work

Before the pandemic, Immediate’s creative workflows were primarily hosted on-premises, with most people working in an office environment. However, the rapid shift to working from home during the pandemic led to an increased reliance on VPNs.  Unfortunately, the transition highlighted various shortcomings, including difficulties working with large media files, collaborating on projects, and increased cybersecurity risks due to working outside the office network.

As the company predominantly uses Adobe Creative Cloud to create content and collaborate on projects, file syncing solutions, such as Microsoft SharePoint and Google Drive, weren’t suitable, as they don’t support the file-locking semantics used by those apps and don’t allow files to be worked on until they are completely downloaded. Adams sought a cloud-based solution to address the problem. An existing supplier (Colyer) recommended LucidLink Filespaces; the rest is history. 

“We knew we wanted a cloud-based file server to move editorial workflows into the cloud. However, some of the products we looked at were either expensive, clunky in terms of needing hardware, or didn’t particularly improve the productivity of our remote creative teams. Then we tried LucidLink. It was a game changer,” shares Adams.

LucidLink for Remote Collaboration and Team Communications

A company-wide migration to LucidLink was rolled out rapidly after some testing. “Users picked LucidLink up very quickly,” adds Adams. “Sign-on was straightforward, with Filespaces presented in a standardized manner requiring very little training.”

“We were also impressed with LucidLink’s Sales and Support teams. We felt like we were talking to people who easily understood the needs of our creative workflow.”

LucidLink’s security credentials were a key reason for the green light. “We like that data is encrypted in the local cache as well as in the cloud. That was a big box ticked.”

Another thing that set the product apart from conventional storage and sync solutions was how LucidLink streams data, allowing teams to eliminate the tedious process of spending time and storage space on downloading files. 

All creative teams at Immediate, including those responsible for producing website content, videos, and print titles, now use LucidLink.

Ease-of-use for Hybrid Workflows

Immediate now operates a hybrid working policy, so it’s critical that those who work remotely are connected to project files the same way as those in the office. They manage access by splitting the content up by team, and each team is restricted to its own share.

Adams says, “LucidLink gives remote users an experience that is similar to being in the office; only now we also have the added benefit of being able to work from anywhere.”

LucidLink ensures that projects stay on track and deadlines are met regardless of the team members’ location. “Hybrid working prompted us to revise our production methods, and LucidLink has been instrumental in enabling us to be more productive and efficient,” stated Adams. 

Immediate has also optimized its video production processes by moving to LucidLink. Teams no longer have to rely on slow on-prem servers or continually shipping external hard drives. Additionally, LucidLink has replaced other video workflow tools, allowing the team to complete tasks within a single platform, which saves them valuable time and effort.

Immediate has been very pleased with how easy it is to use LucidLink Filespaces. The solution seamlessly mounts a volume on the team’s MacBooks, making it hard to tell the difference from their on-prem server. The increased security provided by LucidLink's Zero-knowledge data encryption has also been essential, offering the Immediate team much-needed peace of mind. This, in turn, has given them the freedom to be creative and focus on delivering high-quality content.