Western Digital Extends Reach Into M&E Market

Western Digital Corporation has joined three media and entertainment (M&E) industry technical organizations.

As an active member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California (USC), and the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA), Western Digital will help drive object storage and other essential cloud storage technologies for a broad range of production-focused environments.

“Storage is a vital consideration across all media workflows for industry technologists,” said Barbara Lange, executive director, SMPTE and HPA. “It’s very important for us to welcome key storage technology companies so that we have the critical insights into the future of cloud-based object storage.“

Western Digital will provide technical education to these organizations, concentrating on the value of object storage across workflows, from ingest to playout, as it helps reduce cost, increase performance and efficiency, and assure data durability and security. The company will also contribute to the organizations by sharing advanced cloud-based storage methodologies for fast access of media archives, as well as forward-looking delivery approaches for data-heavy media content.

“It is essential to work with the media production industry to scope application storage requirements, and these new relationships will help us do that,” said Barbara Murphy, VP marketing, WDC. “Our teamwork with SMPTE, ETC, and HPA will help us advance the benefits of object storage across the media industry. Through our involvement with ETC, we look forward to motivating emerging industry leaders by demonstrating the important role cloud storage plays in media production as they begin to influence the breadth of M&E enterprises in Hollywood and beyond.“

During last NAB Show, WDC highlighted its SMPTE, ETC, and HPA relationships and showcased the HGST Active Archive System, its Amazon S3-compliant, scale-out object storage system, which provides massively scalable capacity at a low TCO that rivals the economics of traditional cloud infrastructures.