Spectra Logic this week announced the support of the new IBM® TS1160 tape drive and media in the TFinity® ExaScale Tape Library and Spectra® T950, T950V, and T380 tape libraries. This marks another milestone for the enterprise tape market with the new TS1160 tape drive capable of storing up to 20TB of uncompressed data on a single JE media cartridge. It also means that a TFinity ExaScale tape library can hold over 800PB of uncompressed data or over 2EB of data with full compression in a single tape library, making it the largest data storage machine on the market today. The new drive also has improved throughput of 400 MB/s, enabling a fully loaded TFinity with 144 TS1160 drives to transfer data at a rate of over 57.5GB/s. This high level of throughput is not found on any other archive storage machine.
Scaling Storage in Multi-Use Supercomputing Research Environments: ACCRE at Vanderbilt
Supercomputing research environments in universities must often accommodate different user needs, navigating the storage requirements of not only departments and researchers across campus, but also meeting the standards of external partners and industry collaborators.
This is certainly the case for the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education (ACCRE) at Vanderbilt University, the foremost resource for the high-performance computing requirements of the various research teams and grant projects across the Vanderbilt community. Over 50 departments and more than 850 researchers turn to ACCRE for a multitude of services, from utilizing their Big Data cluster, to leveraging their large high-bandwidth distributed storage network, to employing their tape backup services.
Observations from the Show Floor at NABShow NY
It’s been a few years since I last visited NAB NY. At the time of my last visit, the show was called HD World. More than a few things have changed since then. Now branded the NAB of the East, NAB NY has a fresh face and opens its arms to the eastern-seaboard of broadcasters, production shops, and media, entertainment and technology professionals looking for new and innovative ways to create, manage, deliver and monetize content on any platform.
With over 102,000 attendees, NAB NY 2018 showcased the trends shaping the future of media and entertainment and offered big-picture insights and critical details on the latest disruptive technologies in the industry. The two-day show provided an opportunity for Spectra to meet with its valued technical partners – the likes of CatDV and StorageDNA along with many others – while also connecting us with numerous channel partners and value-added resellers. These meetings help drive the business, fueling and strengthening commitments to grow our solution sets and integrations and ultimately providing our customers with modern storage solutions that fit seamlessly into their workflows.
Spectra Logic Recognized with Prestigious Industry Awards
It’s been a busy quarter for Spectra Logic when it comes to earning accolades and awards. Spectra Logic is honored to be recognized by a number of prestigious organizations who have identified Spectra Logic and our solutions as being at the top of our industry. With over 100 patents and a strong investment in research and development, Spectra Logic continues to innovate and the company’s recent accolades underscore its commitment to and success in delivering groundbreaking data storage solutions to our global customer base. Here’s the award lineup:
Spectra Logic Solution for British Film Institute Receives Widespread Media Coverage
Spectra Logic last month announced that the British Film Institute (BFI), the lead organization for film in the UK, commissioned OvationData to deploy two Spectra® T950 Tape Libraries and two Spectra® BlackPearl® Converged Storage Systems for long-term digital preservation of the UK’s film history, as part of its Unlocking Film Heritage digitization project.
The announcement and case study received widespread media coverage, with many industry and press outlets detailing how Spectra’s non-proprietary and genetically diverse solution will enable the BFI to protect and preserve its valuable digital assets for decades to come, making its archives easily accessible to filmmakers, researchers and the general public.
Future Proof Migration for Media and Entertainment with Spectra
Today’s media and entertainment (M & E) market is experiencing seismic shifts. The way media is consumed continues to evolve, and the majority of people in the world have instant access to a surplus of content at all times. The volume of digital assets created each day by media and entertainment (M & E) organizations continues to grow exponentially over time and shows no sign of slowing down, with video being the single biggest driver of growth in the industry through multi-camera images, higher resolution and HDR content. Moreover, the data storage needs of content owners are changing as technology evolves.
Trends at International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) Amsterdam 2018
As I write this, I am currently flying back home to the United States after another great show for Spectra at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam. The show brings together almost 60,000 visitors, attracting different players from the media and entertainment industry from all over the world. The conference’s program of panels, discussions and keynotes features more than 400 speakers and is complemented by a comprehensive exhibition which brings together close to 1700 exhibitors, each showcasing the state of the art in technology. I am exhausted but also energized from all the great conversations we had with customers and partners.
Modern Data Solutions Propel Spectra to the Forefront of Media and Entertainment Storage
By Hossein ZiaShakeri, Spectra senior vice president of business development & strategic alliances
In today’s dynamic and ever-changing market where technology shifts with priorities and business models, there exists tremendous confusion and industry consolidation. It is crucial for media and entertainment (M & E) entities to adapt to the fast-paced market to remain on top, keep a competitive edge and stay successful. Re-evaluating one’s strategies and looking forward is essential – hence the phrase ‘adapt or die’. To stay relevant, entertainment businesses must be agile, efficient, and innovative in the way that they produce, store, manage, and distribute their content. As M & E organizations try to find the right infrastructure to manage content throughout its life cycle, they are faced not only with the question of what strategy will provide the greatest return on investment (ROI) and drive positive business outcomes, but which company they can trust with this business-critical decision.
Customers Affected by Hurricane Florence Can Call the Spectra Storage Crisis Lifeline
Hurricane Florence is expected to strike the southeastern portion of the United States very soon. In fact, governors of North and South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia have already declared states of emergency far ahead of the approaching storm.
As Spectra Logic’s customers along Hurricane Florence’s path prepare to protect their homes and families, our team is ramping up to support their business operations wherever possible by initiating our Storage Crisis Lifeline program, which was first introduced in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina.
Spectra Tape Air Gap Fights Cybercrime
by Fred Moore
President, Horison Information Strategies
The changing landscape of the data protection industry has evolved from backing up data to providing recovery from hardware and network failures, software bugs, and human errors, as well as fighting a mounting wave of cybercrime. Over the years, reliability and resiliency level of hardware and software have significantly improved. Cybercrime, however, has now become a bigger threat to data protection than accidental deletion, bit rot or drive failure. And the stakes are getting higher as anonymous cyber criminals seek to profit from the valuable digital data of others. With a ceasefire in the cybercrime war unlikely, we are witnessing the convergence of data protection and cybersecurity to counter rapidly growing cybercrime threats, including ransomware.
Imagen helps businesses, sports organisations and media companies to manage and distribute their ever growing media libraries. This ensures fast, easy, secure and controlled access to content through a highly-customisable content portal. With video representing 60 percent of global data – and set to grow further – Imagen Ltd ensures companies can preserve their valuable content for the future and enable them to maximise its value. Imagen has over 1 million hours of video stored on behalf of leading brands.
Imagine Communications empowers the media and entertainment industry through transformative innovation. Broadcasters, networks, video service providers and enterprises around the world rely on our optimized, future-proof, multiscreen video and revenue enablement solutions every day to support their mission-critical operations. Today, nearly half of the world’s video channels traverse our products, and our software solutions drive close to a third of global ad revenue. Through continuous innovation, we are delivering the most advanced IP, cloud-enabled, software-defined network and workflow solutions in the industry. 
BlackPearl for VSNExplorer
Vizrt provides real-time 3D graphics, video playout, studio automation, sports analysis, journalist story tools, and asset management tools for the media and entertainment industry. This includes interactive and virtual solutions, animations, maps, weather, story and video editing, compositing, and multiplatform VOD and live playout tools. Vizrt has customers in more than 100 countries worldwide and the list keeps growing each day. This is made possible by nearly 600 engaged and very competent employees in 40 offices around the world. Vizrt’s business model provides its customers with complete packages, including hardware, professional services, installations, support, etc. Vizrt’s products are used by the world’s leading broadcasters, including CNN, CBS, Fox, BBC, BSkyB, Sky Sports, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, Al Jazeera, NDR, ITN, ZDF, Star TV, Network 18, TV Today, CCTV, NHK and the list keeps growing. Furthermore, many world-class production houses and corporate institutions such as the London Stock Exchange use Vizrt systems.
Tiger Technology designs, markets, and supports innovative shared storage solutions that maximize workflow, performance and value. Our mission is to empower world-class organizations to share, manage and migrate their data more easily. Our range of solutions suit any application or deployment and lets you extract the maximum system performance possible, whatever the platform. They include simple project, media and data management workflow tools for shared storage (SAN, NAS) administration, clustering, pooling, hierarchical storage management and tiering, for use with enterprise data, editorial, visual effects and animation, and surveillance and medical applications. They are available in appliance, software-only and enterprise-class server forms. 
Focused and dynamic, Suitcase TV is a UK company specialising in software solutions for the broadcast industry since 2000.
The BlackPearl and Ngenea integration provides seamless storage tiering from primary storage to BlackPearl within user’s Spectrum Scale and PixStor environments, without having to rely on complicated software packages. Providing a single, simple ingest point, data flow is managed to each storage tier, while preserving easy access to content.
Providing Integrated & Automated Data Governance Platforms
NL Technology is an award winning innovator of solutions that bring cost efficiency and automation to file based acquisition and digital content management workflows since 2000. The talented development team at NL Technology continues to put forth solutions that bring efficiency and cost savings to their customers with tools that enhance and simplify operations.
Marquis moves media and metadata between different systems in broadcast and post-production workflows.
Levels Beyond is the Denver-based company behind the software platform Reach Engine that allows companies to create and curate video content on new era tools and enable smart, secure and elastic cloud services in sync with media workflow. With Reach Engine, Levels Beyond has created an evolvable and customizable system serving more than 70 Tier One clients internationally. Levels Beyond partners with companies of all sizes to create innovative solutions that advance media businesses. Learn more at 
Komprise, the first intelligent data management service, empowers businesses to efficiently manage today’s massive scale of data growth while unlocking its value. The Komprise mission is to radically simplify data management through intelligent automation. The Komprise team has a successful track record with two prior businesses of eliminating storage/IT cost and complexity. Backed by Canaan Partners, Komprise was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, go to 
The free, open-source Java Command Line Interface (CLI) is a simple tool to move files between local storage and BlackPearl. The Java CLI can be used to move files manually or automatically on a scheduled basis.
IPV Curator helps content creators to save time while creating more media. It enables users to make their content-oriented workflows more efficient, from ingest, to tagging, editing, file delivery and archiving. Curator is used globally by all kinds of content creators including traditional broadcasters, colleges and houses of worship. Its advanced capabilities include intuitive searching, remote cloud editing, and working on live growing content.
The free, open-source Eon Browser provides a simple drag-and-drop interface to move files between local storage and BlackPearl.
Cyberduck is a free, open source client for transferring files between servers, including both public and private cloud environments. The user interacts with the interface, including file transfer, by drag and drop and notifications via Growl. Cyberduck includes a bookmark manager and supports Windows system tray notifications and Apple’s Keychain and Bonjour networking. It supports over 25 different languages, allowing for rapid deployment into existing workflows.
CatDV is an easy to use yet uniquely powerful media asset management system used across a wide range of industries as a media database, logging, automation and collaboration tool. Ultimately CatDV helps companies find and reuse their media assets, helping teams collaborate, getting more done, saving both time and money.
Avid is the world’s leading provider of audio and video technology for media organizations and independent professionals. Avid solutions allow for the creation, distribution, and monetizing of the most prestigious and award-winning films, videos, music recordings, TV shows, live concerts, and news broadcasts.
Arcitecta specializes in data management systems for large-scale distributed data. Our core product, Mediaflux™, is an operating system for metadata and data enabling distributed groups of people to share, manipulate and manage any type of data.
ArcaStream enables companies to cost effectively store and manage their data assets. They provide highly scalable, efficient, enterprise class storage, network and archive solutions for the Oil & Gas, Life Science, Education and Research sectors. Their data centric approach simplifies data management within existing workflow and makes them the perfect partner for the supply and support of software defined storage solutions.