BROADCAST

High-Bandwidth Scalable Storage

Today’s broadcasters face enormous challenges in dealing with digital content workflows and massive file sizes. As workflows become increasingly open-systems based, and the choice of applications becomes greater than ever, the importance of a scalable, highly optimizable storage solution is enormous. Storage is at the heart of every digital broadcast environment, and must be both highly reliable and extremely flexible. Active Storage products were built with those attributes at their core, along with ease of use, and ease of deployment.

Broadcast is no longer just about the on-air portion of the business. Managing content and allowing for quick utilization and repurposing across multiple distribution segments is no longer a luxury; rather, it has become a requirement.

The industry is becoming more competitive; delays in moving and processing content are simply no longer acceptable. Today, with high-performance multi-core processing power available on both servers and desktop computers, and storage systems possessing the bandwidth to deliver faster than real time performance with the lowest and most consistent latency possible, the entire workflow efficiency comes down to this: how good is your storage solution? Active Storage is up to the challenge of even the most demanding, enterprise level, 24/7 broadcast environments.

“We suggested Active Storage. It’s a fantastic product you can rely on, and that you can give to the client and say—It’s gonna work.”

- Monica Reina-Kadner, CEO
Simplemente, Value Added Reseller, Post-Production Specialists

Ingest, transformation and playout, while now fully digital, still involve many steps and often pass through many different applications and vendors making the efficiency of content storage and availability all that more important. The competence of the infrastructure must be guaranteed. This is no simple task, as the integration of all components is important.

The use of Mac OS X, Linux and Windows in the same workflow makes the problem even more complex. Unlike some storage providers, Active Storage products were designed to facilitate seamless integration of multi-platform systems, as opposed to typical data storage companies force-fitting their products to work with Final Cut Pro or other Apple products. Further, our products have been designed to effortlessly handle the massive size and scope of HD video files—a real problem for other data storage providers.

Active Storage is addressing the problems of broadcast digital content workflow by offering an open system storage solution, based on industry standards. By doing so, Active Storage can ensure compatibility with a larger number of open systems and maintain the ability to qualify additional systems more quickly.

Active Storage technology provides a self-optimizing architecture that lends itself well to the changing and demanding needs of broadcasters using and moving to open systems. Our extensive knowledge of Modern OS systems such as Mac OS X and Linux give Active Storage the unique ability to derive the greatest throughput and reliability, when dealing with the large file size of content used in broadcast. Active Storage’s experience with complex workflows and interfacing with open system partners within some of the premier owned-content broadcasters around the world, provides a real-world perspective on how optimized media production and playout systems can, and should work.

Some broadcasters currently using Active Storage products:

“We recently completed qualification testing at one of the most demanding broadcast clients in the world - the performance and reliability of the ActiveRAID was absolutely stellar.”

Active Storage systems are designed to provide out-of-box performance and reliability for intense broadcast environments. Our storage solutions are based on industry standard components and require no additional client or server software, and work natively within a workflow’s file system. This allows for scalability, growth, and easy migration if required.

The investment in storage for your broadcast facility can be significant, and scaling it to meet growing needs and more and more content must always be considered. Active Storage can scale in both capacity and performance, and does so in a cost-effective manner that fits your individual needs.

As open systems evolve, locking in to a proprietary, non-industry standard storage solution can be limiting. That’s why Active Storage develops all products around universal industry standards and native file system transparency.

In short, having Active Storage in your infrastructure allows systems engineers to focus on other areas of workflow and empowers them to build highly functional and reliable digital workflows without worrying about the throughput constraints of the storage.

“The notion of going tapeless has really just sped up everything; everything is so much faster to send from one department to the other… I used to say this place is like a sleeping monster, and they (Active Storage) put in a new heart and a new brain…
and the monster is competitive now.

Active Storage solutions are sold through our network of Qualified Value Added Resellers. Please contact us for a broadcast specialist in your area, or to learn more about our products click here.