As an IT professional, a new year means new perspectives and a chance to evaluate your IT infrastructure – is it fully equipped to drive your business forward in the years ahead?  If you’ve seen the most recent IDC report, they’re predicting the world’s digital data will grow to 163 zettabytes by 2025*. That’s the equivalent of 11,600 stacks of books, with each stack reaching 93 million miles into the sky – the distance between the earth’s surface and the surface of the sun.

With that in mind, 2019 might be a great year to examine the latest technology trends so you can prepare your organization and department for the digital sea wave that’s coming – IoT, edge computing, artificial intelligence, data mining, virtual reality, global connectivity, artificial intelligence, data legislation and quantum computing, to name a few. Read More

Culture is key to Spectra Logic’s ongoing success, and learning and development (L&D) is part of Spectra’s continuous efforts to foster a corporate culture of growth and innovation.

Spectra employees attend a company-wide training at the Boulder, CO headquarters

Spectra invests in its team by offering training in both soft and hard skills. For the past several years, the company has focused its learning curriculum on management training and development programs. These have been attended by both experienced and new managers, as well as non-manager employees. These classes have improved communication and boosted employee morale, while enabling associates to effectively manage their people and projects. Spectra also offers hard skills training in the areas of time management, desktop applications and project management. Some examples of current and recent trainings are listed below. Read More

For the past 40 years, Spectra Logic has been a company dedicated to promoting corporate culture and inclusivity among its employees. Spectra Logic provides a casual work environment, competitive benefits and salary, and a compensation structure that rewards hard work and abilities. Our people are what we value most, which is why we offer them excellent perks, benefits and company activities aimed at making Spectra an enjoyable place to work.

Health & Fitness

Spectra provides its associates with a multitude of activities that foster a fun, active and healthy lifestyle. Spectra’s world headquarters in Boulder, CO, is surrounded by running trails, and is located just a short distance from the Boulder Reservoir and Coot Lake recreation areas. Cruiser bikes, pinball machines, foosball and ping pong tables, horseshoes, and a sand volleyball court, are all available for employees to enjoy on their breaks. The location also features two well-equipped onsite gyms, with a large space for personal training/group instruction, and a smaller space convenient for drop-in cardio and strength training workouts. A variety of beginner and high-intensity strength & conditioning classes are offered each week by local personal trainer Judd NeSmith. Read More

As we reflect on the past calendar year, Spectra Logic has much to celebrate. We accomplished a lot in 2018, and are looking forward to an even more successful 2019.

Here is a recap of some of our top achievements:

1) Customer Wins: Several major customers deployed Spectra storage solutions in 2018, including the University of South Dakota, the Advanced Computing Center for Research & Education at Vanderbilt University, BFI, ITV and Cisneros Media, to name but a few. Spectra is proud to offer its solutions to prominent organizations across several vertical markets around the globe. Spectra’s focus on modern, forward-looking storage solutions and its commitment to research and development has underpinned its continued success in 2018 in both the high performance computing (HPC) and media and entertainment (M & E) markets. Read More

For this year’s holiday celebration, Spectra Logic certainly decked the halls, heedless of the wind and weather. The company’s annual holiday party was hosted at its headquarters in Boulder, CO. The entire building was packed with Spectra associates and their families, enjoying hors d’oeuvres, libations, and most of all, each other’s company.

The event featured contributions from every department, who formed into groups loosely based on world regions and each created singular themed environments. Spectra employees and loved ones got to enjoy seven different parties throughout the building. Attendees were given a passport to stamp at each location, and those who visited every region were eligible to turn in their passport to enter a prize drawing. Read More

by Elizabeth Rosenthal
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Results from supercomputer simulations will reside in modernized tape library

Tape recorders and videocassette tapes may be considered archaic in the entertainment industry, but magnetic tape storage remains one of the most durable, secure, and cost-effective ways to archive big data generated by supercomputers.

After researchers run code on high-performance computing (HPC) systems, key results are initially stored on disks and then transferred to tape libraries for long-term storage. These systems contain tape drives that write data onto magnetic tape and hundreds or thousands of tape cartridges. Robotic arms place these cartridges in slots for safekeeping and retrieve them when users need to access data to cite experiment outcomes in academic articles or share accomplishments with colleagues. Read More

High performance computing (HPC) environments continually test the limits of technology and require peak performance from equipment—including storage. Spectra Logic builds some of the largest storage systems in the world. Spectra’s TFinity® ExaScale Tape Library, deployed in many HPC environments across the globe, is under continuous improvement to deliver the highest possible value for HPC customers. When it comes to storing data in HPC environments, organizations choose to work with Spectra because of our company culture and technology advancements. Developments like the TeraPack®, Time-Based Access Ordering System (TAOS) and TFinity Zoning provide unsurpassed performance, reliability, and scalability.  Spectra’s data storage solutions help push the boundaries of operational objectives. Read More

Last week, Spectra Logic exhibited at one of its largest industry trade shows of the year: Supercomputing 2018. Also referred to as SC18, Supercomputing is an international event dedicated to showcasing work in high performance computing (HPC), networking, storage and analysis. The show was held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, and was attended by HPC professionals from around the globe. This year’s conference also celebrated 30 years of the SC Conference Series and included anniversary exhibits that provided attendees with an opportunity to review and celebrate the collective accomplishments in HPC. Read More

Universities looking to contribute to society and attract top-tier employees and students from around the globe have found that investing in research and innovation is key to maintaining and growing their competitive edge. Engaging in groundbreaking research, their onsite labs, computational clusters and storage networks can be comparable in performance and capacity to many institutional high-performance computing (HPC) platforms.

University supercomputing environments can generate massive amounts of invaluable data from digital projects that must be stored and protected forever per extensive governmental security requirements.  These research institutions often handle a number of different user needs and navigate the data storage requirements of not only departments, researchers and grant projects across campus, but also external partners and industry collaborators.  Spectra has worked closely with numerous higher education organizations throughout the years, providing cost-effective data storage solutions that help them outperform short- and long-term goals. Find out what we’ve learned about performance, growth, and environmental needs in these educational environments below. Read More