Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC) and Hitachi Data Systems have announced a large capacity SAN-based video file sharing solution for the video production and digital broadcasting industry.
The new solution demonstrates the ability to successfully manage both anticipated and unanticipated increases in requirements to access stored files, 24 hours a day. This directly addresses the problem of performance and capacity shortcomings of current NFS and CIFS solutions
The solution combines ADIC's high-speed file sharing system - CentraVision - and Hitachi Freedom Storage to deliver an extremely high-throughput video engine. ADIC's CentraVision sharing layer connects the video production team's individual heterogeneous workstations to the centrally stored video footage, enabling them to work on files at the source.
Says Fanie van Rensburg, MD of Shoden Data Systems: "This eliminates the cumbersome task of users having to manually copy the piece of video that they want to work on from the central archive, and then having to copy it back once they have completed their work."
Furthermore, this degree of enhanced access allows video production and broadcasting companies to greatly improve workflow for applications such as video editing, streaming video over IP, and digital broadcasting. "The technology also provides dramatic performance gains for other high data volume industries, including pre-press, seismic analysis, and high performance computing," he adds.
Hitachi Freedom Storage 9000 family of systems provides this solution with high levels of performance, scalability, speed and reliability, and also brings data centre levels of resilience to the studio environment. According to Van Rensburg, the Thunder 9200 storage system is ideal for studio environments, while larger broadcaster centres would benefit more from the Lightning 9960.
Paul Rutherford, ADIC VP of Technology and Software, comments: "CentraVision can support mission-critical applications common in most broadcast and corporate environments. We selected Hitachi Data Systems as we felt the performance and storage capacity of its Freedom Storage delivers a superior storage foundation for the intensive application demands of broadcast and video production."
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With offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Shoden Data Systems (Pty) Ltd is the sole distributor for Hitachi Data Systems in SA. In addition, Shoden Data Systems is the sole distributor of INRANGE Technologies Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of Channel Extenders, Fibre Channel and ESCON/FICON directors. Shoden Data Systems is also a Veritas Premier Partner and provides integrated, managed, best-of-breed storage area network solutions to the marketplace.
Based on more than 200 collective years of experience in the service, support and marketing of Hitachi products, Shoden Data Systems uses its intellectual capital and industry-leading products to provide customers with total solutions in the storage, enterprise servers and connectivity arenas. The following offerings are available:
1. Storage - the HDS Freedom storage range, including Lightning 9900 and 9200.
2. Connectivity - the Inrange FC/9000 Fibre Channel/ FICON Director, ESCON Directors and Channel Extenders.
Hitachi Data Systems
Committed to helping customers exploit the value of information technology for success in the Internet economy, Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd (NYSE:HIT), is a leading provider of business solutions for the world's most information-intensive corporations. For further information on Hitachi Data Systems, access www.hds.com.
Hitachi Ltd
Hitachi, Ltd, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended 31 March 2001) consolidated sales of 8 417 billion yen ($67.9 billion*) The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd, please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.
* At an exchange rate of 124 yen to the dollar.
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