More than ever, our culture today seems to be a land of extreme viewpoints. You’re either a Liberal or Conservative, either a Leaver or a Remainer, a climate change believer or think the whole thing is one vast conspiracy, etc, etc. Perhaps it is the age we live in with various algorithms designed to highlight […]

The theme for Quantum’s presence next week at NAB is all about “Power What’s Next”. The messaging plays along the line of being ready in your storage infrastructure to handle the next big change in your content workflow. We’ve known about the impact of 4K or even 6K on storage infrastructures and are now even learning about how HDR significantly impacts storage performance requirements. What this means for you, is that you need to envision your environment three years from now when you make storage refresh decisions today. At NAB, Quantum will show you how to Power what’s Next in collaboration with some of our key Quantum Advantage Partners.

In case you missed the news, last November we released Xcellis, our next generation of StorNext-based appliances. With Xcellis, we re-architected the heart of StorNext solutions—metadata control and high-performance storage—with a new converged architecture that stores user data and metadata in a single array. Xcellis offers everything you expect from StorNext: an open system platform, high-performance streaming, extreme scalability, policy-based migration, choice of storage tiers, and an extensive workflow partner ecosystem. But there are three capabilities that are making Xcellis a hot selling product, particularly for our customers in media and entertainment.

Branded video content is all the rage– and for good reason. Already accounting for over half of consumer internet traffic, video will be over 80% of the internet as we know it by 2019. Study after study has confirmed that video is undoubtedly the most powerful medium to connect with customers, employees, and investors (a.k.a. everyone who’s anyone to a business). What’s more, as the Association of National Advertisers report on the rise of the in-house agency observed, companies are increasingly bringing creative work, including video production, in-house. Some of the most progressive brands, like Red Bull and Marriott, run full-blown corporate studios. This trend is expected to continue, as marketing leaders cite several factors for the shift; most notably, speed of project turnaround and a desire to own engagement and conversion data surrounding branded video content. So, in essence: content is king, video content is everything, and leading brands who get this are taking video content management inside.

If you’ve worked in storage for decades as I have, you’ve heard all the debates about which storage works best for each step in media workflows. But one thing that’s clear is that not every step has the same storage requirements, and that some kind of tiered storage strategy is needed. With every-expanding digital asset libraries, storing it all on high-performance disk isn’t practical or cost-effective. Traditional tiered storage is straightforward: store the most active, most recently used data on fastest, expensive disk storage, and store the less active, older data on slower, less expensive storage, generally tape or lower cost disk arrays. Hierarchical storage management (HSM) software was built to automate the data migration between tiers, and make file system access transparent regardless of where the data is stored. When the primary storage filled to a capacity watermark, for example, 90% of capacity, the HSM system would find the files that were least recently used and move them to the secondary tape tier until the disk storage had sufficient available capacity. This model of tiered storage was built for business data where the focus was containing costs. Disk storage was expensive, tape was cheap, and older business data was rarely relevant except for an occasional audit. The criteria was simply performance vs cost. But media workflows don’t manage business data. Here are the 3 biggest considerations for developing a new approach to workflow storage.

One of the challenges an administrator at a content company stumbles with when beginning to implement a MAM-based workflow with a tiered storage solution is which one to lead with. It’s almost like new dance partners stumbling over each other’s feet. Even in well-integrated solutions, where the MAM vendor has coded to the archive vendor’s APIs, there is room for conflict. Does one stick solely to the MAM software itself to drive the archival and retrieval of content to the repository? Or does one complement this with policies in the storage archive software itself to automate the archival? Folks in the Hollywood area have an opportunity to learn more about MAM, archive and workflow storage in a live demo event at MelroseMac’s offices on June 9 with BlackMagic Cameras, Cantemo and StorNext. Read on and RSVP for the event.

It’s so exciting to see today’s announcement that Quantum will be taking on a larger role in selling Dot Hill storage. This is not just another storage channel deal – let me explain why. The partnership of Quantum and Dot Hill began in workflow storage. Quantum enjoys a unique position in the market in serving the needs of the most demanding workflow storage applications – from video production to surveillance, cybersecurity and research. These applications have storage needs which are quite different from traditional corporate applications. They need different solutions. Both companies have noticed that there are adjacent markets and customer needs where tighter collaboration between us—leveraging the technology of Dot Hill and the technology and channel reach of Quantum—can deliver broader value to our customers and partners. Which brings me to the announcement today: Quantum is becoming the branded face of Dot Hill storage.

Video is not just for entertainment anymore. It’s transforming how people communicate in corporations, in universities—and in government organizations. I returned home last Thursday night from the Government Video Expo in Washington D.C., where our days were chock-full of conversations with the people who create video for defense and civilian agencies alike. One highlight at the 2014 #GVExpo was Geoff Stedman’s talk ‘The 7 Things the Beltway Can Learn from Hollywood About Video Workflows.’

Nick Gold and Jason Whetstone from Chesapeake Systems begin the third season of their popular audio podcast series with an in-depth, wide-ranging conversation with Quantum's Alex Grossman and Skip Levens. In this episode, the Workflow Show dives into Alex and Skip's driving passion that they have carried with them since their early days at Apple: To make storage - as it becomes ever more complicated - more flexible and seamless to today's video end-users.

Workflows are evolving as producers, large and small, are utilizing the full range of tools available to create compelling stories. Whether they're a post-production facility focused on motion design or a broadcaster delivering election results, collaboration and speed are core workflow requirements. The adoption of high resolution content has increased editorial flexibility, allowing visual effects and compositing teams to enrich the visual experience. At the same time, producers are managing a wider range of ingest sources, meaning editors have more content to draw upon. With all this increased complexity, storage solutions must meet demands for speed and capacity while remaining open and reliable.