You've got a deadline in six hours. The client is breathing down your neck. Your editor just pinged you: the storage is crawling, and nobody can find the assets from last week's shoot.
So you call your "integrator."
And you get a ticket number.
That's the reality for most creative teams working with the big-box system integrators. You're not a partner. You're not even a priority. You're a number in a queue, waiting for someone: anyone: to call you back while your project bleeds time.
We built 1303 Systems to be the opposite of that.
🛠️ We're Not an Integrator. We're Your Pit Crew.
Here's how we think about it.
In racing, the pit crew doesn't drive the car. The driver does. But when that car pulls into the pit: tires smoking, fuel running low: the crew has seconds to get everything dialed in so the driver can get back on the track and win.
That's us.
Your creative team? They're the drivers. The storytellers. The editors cutting at 2 AM to hit a broadcast window. The colorists obsessing over every frame. The producers juggling twelve deliverables for twelve different platforms.
They shouldn't have to think about storage architecture. Or ingest automation. Or why the MAM is running slow.
That's our job.
We handle the infrastructure so your team can focus on what actually matters: making incredible content.
🎯 The "Big Box" Problem
Let's be real about what you're dealing with when you work with the massive integrators.
They're great at selling you hardware. Fantastic at it, actually. You'll get a beautiful quote, a slick presentation, maybe even a nice lunch.
But then the install happens. And then: inevitably: something breaks. Or something doesn't work quite like the demo promised. Or your team's workflow doesn't fit the "standard" template they sold you.
And that's when you discover the truth:
You're ticket #4,847.
Your urgent problem? It's in the queue behind 4,846 other urgent problems. The engineer who actually understands your system? They're on another account now. The person answering your call? They're reading from a script.
That's not partnership. That's customer service theater.
🔑 The 1303 Systems Difference
We do things differently. And it starts with a simple idea:
We actually know your name.
When you work with 1303 Systems, you're not getting a call center. You're getting a team of media veterans who have been in your shoes: who have lived through the deadline crunches, the storage meltdowns, the "why won't this codec work" nightmares.
We speak "Creative." Not because we learned it from a training manual, but because we've spent years in the trenches of media and entertainment, enterprise IT, and software development.
And here's the thing that really sets us apart:
Our CTO, Chris Collum, is personally involved in your success.
Not in a "he'll shake your hand at the kickoff meeting" kind of way. In a "he's reviewing your architecture and making sure it actually works for your editors" kind of way.
That's the white-glove touch. That's what it means to have a pit crew instead of a vendor.
⚡ What "White Glove" Actually Means
We throw around the term "white glove support" because it's accurate: but let's break down what that really looks like in practice.
24/7 Availability
Your deadlines don't care about business hours. Neither do we. When your system goes sideways at midnight before a major delivery, you need someone who picks up the phone. Not a voicemail. Not a ticket portal. A human who knows your setup and can help you fix it: now.
Solutions Built for YOUR Workflow
We don't sell cookie-cutter packages. Every creative team operates differently. Your ingest pipeline isn't the same as the shop down the street. Your archive needs aren't identical to the broadcast facility across town. We design solutions that fit how your team actually works: not how some product manager in a corporate office thinks you should work.
We Sweat the "Boring" Details
MAM configuration. Storage tiering. Automated ingest workflows. Metadata schemas. Archive retrieval optimization.
This stuff isn't sexy. It's not going to win any awards. But it's the foundation that lets your creative team do award-winning work.
We obsess over these details so you don't have to.
🧩 Media Veterans Who Get It
Here's something the big integrators will never tell you:
Most of their sales engineers have never worked in a post house.
They know the specs. They know the features. They can demo the software beautifully.
But they don't know what it feels like when an editor is screaming because they can't find the hero shot from yesterday's ingest. They don't understand the panic of discovering your archive system takes four days to retrieve footage you need in four hours.
Our team? We've lived it.
We've been the ones troubleshooting at 3 AM. We've been the ones explaining to clients why the deliverable is late because the infrastructure failed. We've been the ones staring at a storage array wondering why it's crawling during the most critical moment of the project.
That experience shapes everything we do. It's why we build systems with redundancy. It's why we obsess over workflow efficiency. It's why we test everything before we hand it over.
Because we know what's at stake.
📦 What We Actually Do
Let's get specific. Here's where we live:
🔄 Media Ingest Automation – We build automated pipelines that get footage from camera cards to your editors' timelines without manual babysitting. Transcoding, proxy generation, metadata tagging: all handled.
🎯 MAM System Integration – Your media asset management system should make finding assets effortless. We design and implement MAM solutions that actually work the way your team thinks.
⚡ Broadcast & Media Systems Integration – From storage architecture to cloud workflows, we build the infrastructure that keeps your operation running smoothly: even under pressure.
🔒 Cloud Storage Optimization – Remote teams need seamless access without the lag. We architect cloud solutions that keep everyone productive, no matter where they're working from.
🧩 On-Prem Storage & Archiving – We build and maintain mission-critical storage at scale—StorNext and Storage Manager, petabyte-class tiering, multi-site replication—so you never worry about data integrity or accessibility. We handle the heavy-duty stuff: metadata controllers, filesystem tuning, HSM policies, and archive lifecycles.
🎯 Real Results, Real Teams
We don't just talk about this stuff. We deliver it.
One leading creative agency came to us drowning in disorganized assets. Their team was spending more time searching for footage than editing it. After we overhauled their media storage and archive system?
50% reduction in asset retrieval time.
That's hours saved every single day. Hours their editors now spend actually editing: not hunting through drives.
Another client: a media organization in New England: was dealing with an archive system that took four days to retrieve footage. Four days. In an industry where deadlines are measured in hours.
We implemented an enterprise storage solution that dropped that retrieval time to minutes. Minutes. And their infrastructure now supports real-time 4K editing and finishing workflows.
That's the difference between a vendor and a pit crew.
🌎 Founded on Doing Things Right
1303 Systems has been at this since 2010. And from day one, we've operated on a simple set of principles:
✅ Integrity – We tell you the truth, even when it's not what you want to hear. If a solution isn't right for your workflow, we'll say so.
✅ Customer-Centricity – Your success is our success. Period. We're not here to sell you boxes. We're here to make your team more effective.
✅ Innovation – The media technology landscape changes constantly. We stay ahead of it so you don't have to.
✅ Collaboration – We work with you, not at you. Your team knows your creative needs better than anyone. Our job is to make the technology serve those needs.
🔑 Ready for a Real Partner?
If you're tired of being a ticket number: if you're ready for a team that actually picks up the phone, knows your system, and cares about your deadlines: we should talk.
We're not the biggest integrator out there. We're not trying to be.
We're the pit crew that helps your creative team win.
