Spectra Logic BlackPearl Available With 14 Media and Entertainment Clients

Spectra Logic Corporation announced that 14 BlackPearl clients designed for media and entertainment (M&E) organisations are available for its BlackPearl Converged Storage System, with more clients in development.

New certified clients developed by M&E partners, including Avid, CatDV, eMAM, IPV Ltd., Imagen, Levels Beyond, Marquis, Vizrt, as well as others, and the introduction of Eon Browser for non-managed creative assets, shows broad adoption of Spectra BlackPearl-based solutions in every size organisation and in differing market segments.

M&E customers rely on production storage to edit, create, complete projects and maintain their catalogue, but then expect to preserve these valuable assets forever on a modern multi-tier archival solution that delivers quick and concurrent response with a predictable cost model as it scales over time. The M&E industry grapples with increasing volumes of video, improved resolutions and mounting costs associated with traditional archival solutions using middleware. Industry-wide, storage solutions are challenged to meet this demand. Spectra BlackPearl with its support for many tiers of storage, including public cloud, meets this challenge in its simplicity to deploy, by scaling to accommodate growing content. The solution offers direct integration to user applications and workflows to its tape-friendly ecosystem, helping to alleviate the burden on production storage.

The growing number of available BlackPearl clients is a testimony to adoption of this modern approach to ‘active’ content archiving. M&E users have access to a broad array of BlackPearl-based solutions with its network of integrated partners.

Through key partnerships and its Developer Program, Spectra Logic continues to expand and deliver modern and standards-based storage solutions that fit to the changing needs of this modern era in the M&E market.

Developer Program provides an array of tools and technical assistance to simplify and enable users to integrate their environment into a BlackPearl Converged Storage System. For example, customers with Ceph environments have utilised Developer Program tools and technical assistance to integrate a BlackPearl Converged Storage System directly into their workflows.

About Spectra BlackPearl Converged Storage System
It solves the problem of costly and complex approaches to digital preservation by combining NAS and S3-based interfaces with multiple storage targets into a simple and affordable solution. Designed for numerous concurrent workflows, BlackPearl reduces the need for expensive third-party data movers by integrating Spectra S3-based interfaces with a range of certified clients and simple file movers. A BlackPearl solution with any combination of enterprise or archive disk and/or tape (LTFS) provides organisations with control of their data via local copies, offsite replicated copies, and offsite public cloud replication. From the affordable BlackPearl V Series that can transfer data at 300MB/s to the BlackPearl P Series that can transfer data at more than 3,000MB/s, there is a BlackPearl option for every organisation.

The Spectra BlackPearl Eon browser provides a graphical interface that allows customers to move data on a host computer or a network share to a BlackPearl gateway, and copy data back to a host computer from the gateway. Data transferred to the gateway can optionally be transferred to tape- or disk-based storage, which simplifies data transfer.

BlackPearl Converged Storage System for Media and Entertainment Environments

“The media and entertainment industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom in content creation due to the emergence of virtual reality, augmented reality, 4K/8K and the increased adoption of video on demand and streaming,” said Tom Coughlin, founder and president, Coughlin Associates. “Spectra BlackPearl continues to evolve to serve this industry providing scaling and cost models designed for growing video content through multi-tiered storage.“

“Spectra BlackPearl with Avid’s MediaCentral Platform delivers cost-effective, sophisticated archives to companies of all sizes, which is particularly important for smaller organisations with budget constraints,” said Alan Hoff, VP, market solutions, Avid Technology, Inc. “Our collaboration and joint BlackPearl certified solutions with MediaCentral allows us to provide a modern archive solution that meets both small and large enterprise customers’ expectations-including simplicity, performance and predictive cost containment.“

“Our customers value organisation and security when it comes to their valuable content,” said Dave Clack, CEO, Square Box Systems Ltd. “They require an archive that is easy to use with the CatDV MAM, and reasonably priced. We pride ourselves on providing tools that save time and money, plus prevent stress as lots of new content is created. With CatDV and BlackPearl together, content can quickly and efficiently be searched, retrieved and repurposed, across all storage tiers.“

“Levels Beyond customers choose an integrated solution with Spectra BlackPearl and Reach Engine because it gives them the ability to control the entire content lifecycle from planning through distribution,” said Danny Gold, chief strategy officer, Levels Beyond, Inc. “Our combined solution gives our common customers the ability to establish hybrid cloud and multi-site environments easily and with the automation necessary to meet future business objectives.“

“Both Vizrt and Spectra Logic have long histories in the Media & Entertainment space and this partnership was a natural fit to help our customers create smarter workflows in a cost efficient way,” said Oscar Tengwell, enterprise MAM product manager, Vizrt Ltd. “Spectra BlackPearl with the Viz One client provide an end-to-end workflow that allows our users to easily and seamlessly manage, archive, find and restore large volumes of valuable media content.“

“In most M&E environments today, the current storage management ‘middleware’ software, simply brings too much rigidity, cost and complexity,” said Nathan C. Thompson, CEO, Spectra Logic. “Spectra Logic’s BlackPearl Converged Storage System eliminates middleware, dramatically increasing flexibility, reducing ongoing OpEx and allowing customers to simply optimise and share the usage of flash, disk, tape and public cloud.“