In high school I worked for a French restaurant in a nearby affluent town in the suburbs of Boston. One of my co-worker friends attended Concord Academy, a prep school in the area. Some weekends we’d finish work at the restaurant around 11:00 pm and head into Harvard Square to catch a midnight show at the Brattle Theatre. On a couple of these outings, my co-worker would bring one of his friends who he called “Sam, Man of Angst.” It was a strange nickname, but appropriate. He had the hand-wringing mannerisms and caustic sarcasm far in advance of his 17 years.
Speaking of angst, some of Apple’s recent decisions — retiring X-Serve and now Final Cut Server, the release of Final Cut Pro X — have caused more than a little bit of angst and consternation within the professional video market. Even as Apple’s consumer success grows (recently knocking HP’s TouchPad out before it could even take its robe off in the ring), many question the company’s commitment to the professional video market.
What to do?
If you are worried about your investment in Final Cut, Apple systems and storage infrastructure, how do you protect yourself?
On the X-Serve front, some parties are simply rolling with the tide — swapping out X-Serves and replacing them with aftermarket rack mount kits for MAC minis, or even the new Thunderbolt Mac minis (awaiting Promise’s SANLink Fibre to Thunderbolt adapter). Others are taking bolder steps. StorNext partner Active Storage has released Xsan MetaData Controller bundles (ActiveSAN) to replace X-Serve’s. And Quantum itself has recently come out with its M330 appliance to simplify deployments and provide enterprise support from a single vendor.
On the Final Cut Server side, several companies had developed solutions that integrated asset management with tiered data archival solutions like StorNext Storage Manager. Keeper Technologies, for example, developed its turnkey Motion Media Suite around FCS for smart, nearline archive and backup. The Final Cut Server retirement represents a good opportunity for companies like Dalet with Media Life and AVID with Interplay Production to capitalize.
Even more significant is the movement in video editing suites and the resulting impact on storage infrastructures. The bundling of Xsan 2.3 as a free component included in Apple OS X Lion has satisfied some in the post-production industry. But others are still worried. Many are moving or considering moving their editing suites from Final Cut 7 to Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro. The trick will be whether customers will have to replace their investment in MAC-oriented SAN infrastructure with the switch of video editors. StorNext can help remove some of the costs targeted for replacing SAN infrastructure, which allows future investments to be focused on video editing software.
Quantum is committed to the MAC high-performance shared storage market. StorNext and Apple Xsan have maintained tight interoperability over the past seven years. And Quantum has continued to develop new capabilities and offerings. Recent engineering efforts by Quantum with Group Logic have resulted in Group Logic developing MAC LAN connectivity using Apple Filing Protocol to access StorNext file shares through a Windows gateway. For video editors with lower performance throughput requirements that can be satisfied through the LAN or simply for browse clients, the Group Logic LAN Client for StorNext may be an option. Group Logic also developed cleaner MAC tiered data/archival interoperability with StorNext Storage Manager with its ArchiveConnect product.
So, although it has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, we believe that StorNext can help reduce the angst. Unless your name is Sam.
