ASPERA - A NEW APPROACH
TO HIGH SPEED DATA TRANSFER
IBM Aspera software enables organizations to move huge datasets at maximum speeds anywhere in the world, regardless of file size.
What does file or data available at the speed of the mission or project mean to you?
Fast
100x+ faster than FTP anywhere in the world
Secure
Data encryption, verification, user authentication, and reporting to protect data and help meet HIPAA requirements
Flexible
Support for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid storage
Reliable
Guaranteed delivery, no matter how large the file is
Legacy file sharing problems
95% say their file collaboration don't meet their needs
58% say file sharing and sync tools are too slow or simply fail with big files
53% report security as a roadblock to effective file sharing
Hard Drive Shipments
- Increased risk of data loss & theft
- Time-consuming & labor-intensive
- Expensive to rush deliver
FTP File Transfer
- Very slow over distance
- Unreliable for big files
- Creates network congestion
- No security out of the box
Cloud File Sharing
- Consumer grade security
- Slow upload/download for big files
- Limited or no support for private cloud or on-premises
Performance at any distance
Move any data (imagery, surveillance video, sensor data, feeds, streams...) over multi-hop satellite networks, RF, and tactical radio networks in predictable time frame, even with extreme latency & packet loss.
Collaboration
Replace FTP, email-drive, or physical file transfers using secure uploads & file exchanges with many sites and agencies located around the globe
Ingest and/or distribute any data (maps, software updates, intelligence artifacts...) to/from central command and analysis centers to worldwide mission locations
Ingest or migrate any data with technologies that support fast retrieval. Support reliable HA and DR scenarios. Reduce cost, time, and effort as compared with manual data movement.
Performance at any distance
Move any data (imagery, surveillance video, sensor data, feeds, streams...) over multi-hop satellite networks, RF, and tactical radio networks in predictable time frame, even with extreme latency & packet loss.
Collaboration
Replace FTP, email-drive, or physical file transfers using secure uploads & file exchanges with many sites and agencies located around the globe
Ingest and/or distribute any data (maps, software updates, intelligence artifacts...) to/from central command and analysis centers to worldwide mission locations
Ingest or migrate any data with technologies that support fast retrieval. Support reliable HA and DR scenarios. Reduce cost, time, and effort as compared with manual data movement.
Key Aspera capabilities
Key encryption and data transfer requirements
Explosive data growth
Government missions had big data requirements earlier than most; now even larger
Global data generation
Data required for analysis or decision making often originates at remote locations
Distributed data consumption
The worldwide need for data including map data, system updates, intelligence, and files to support remote work or global workflow; agile processes increase transfer needs
Fast, secure delivery
Traditional file transport is slow over WAN links if possible at all; shipping hard disks is slwo and risks security breach in transit
Information shelf life
Some data, like intellifence photos or forensic data, can be most valuable if delivered in the fastest manner possible
End-to-end visibility of exchange
Tracking, managing, and reporting on transfers can be challenging. Are systems capable of line rate transfers when most needed?
Explosive data growth
Government missions had big data requirements earlier than most; now even larger
Global data generation
Data required for analysis or decision making often originates at remote locations
Distributed data consumption
The worldwide need for data including map data, system updates, intelligence, and files to support remote work or global workflow; agile processes increase transfer needs
Fast, secure delivery
Traditional file transport is slow over WAN links if possible at all; shipping hard disks is slwo and risks security breach in transit
Information shelf life
Some data, like intellifence photos or forensic data, can be most valuable if delivered in the fastest manner possible
End-to-end visibility of exchange
Tracking, managing, and reporting on transfers can be challenging. Are systems capable of line rate transfers when most needed?
IBM Aspera File Transfer Calculator
Use case examples
Products
- Aspera Shares, Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server, Aspera Console
Challenge
- Enabling fast, easy and reliable delivery of large energy infrastructure inspection data sets, up to several terabytes, to anywhere in the world
Products
- Aspera Shares, Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server, Aspera Console
Challenge
- Need to transfers petabytes of vehicle sensor and video data between test vehicles and global R&D teams to accelerate software development
Solution
- 500Mbit/s Transfer Server -> 4TB per day
Products
- Aspera Shares, Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server, Aspera Console
Challenge
- Leica's ePathology Solutions convert glass slides into digital images. Uploading these images quickly & securely is a challenge as one patient case, can easily reach over a gigabyte in size.
Solution
...
Explore how different industries use IBM Aspera fast data transfer solutions
Accelerate breakthroughs in research and medicine by helping distributed teams collaborate on large genomic data and medical images.
Provide more cost-effective detection and tapping of new energy sources with faster capture and high-performance computing (HPC) analysis of remote seismic data.
Speed the transfer of rich digital media and purchase data to and from retail stores and consumer goods businesses to help enhance the in-store customer experience and optimize product development.
Evolve your content distribution channels to disrupt traditional telecommunications consumer models with high-speed data transfer, real-time content streaming, and disaster recovery measures.
Send various studies and inspection videos between employees at headquarters, remote sites, and external energy & utility firms.
Reinvent the modern financial institution by enabling big data analytics, batch processing and insurance claims and appraisals from the field.
Transfer PBs of real world video and HD map data collected by vehicles to remote development teams working on next-gen software for self-driving cars in hours rather than weeks.
Transform content production and delivery by leveraging digital file ‒ and stream-based workflows that span cloud and on-premises infrastructures.
JABIL
Jabil relies on IBM® Aspera ® faspex™ on Demand, a high-speed person-to-person file transfer solution, running on IBM® Cloud to enable global users to send and exchange high-value design and engineering files, drastically reducing project turnaround times
“As a company dedicated to providing better, faster and
cheaper services to our
customers, we knew we needed a new solution more aligned with our service objectives... Aspera’s
speed, security and ease of use enable us to provide quality service to our valued customers”
Business Challenge story
As one of the world’s largest manufacturing services providers, with over 30 million square feet of manufacturing space, Jabil manages customers’ supply chains from product development to design engineering to final manufacturing. As Jabil’s business has grown, so has the need for faster exchange of larger and larger design files, such as CAD models and circuit diagrams, with global customers, peers and partners in order to bring innovative products to market quickly, reliably and securely.
Transformation
Aspera replaced slow and tedious file package compression and the need to split up big collections of files into multiple transfers, saving team members time and effort. In addition, the solution resulted in substantial operation expense savings over their previous on-premises MFT solution. IBM® Aspera® faspex On Demand provides quick and reliable uploads and downloads of large design files to and from the IBM® Cloud Object Storage.
Benefits
With high-speed FASP transfers, Aspera maximizes bandwidth and enables geographically dispersed Jabil team members, customers and partners to exchange large design and engineering files via the cloud at the fastest speeds possible, regardless of file size, transfer distance, or network conditions. Jabil has substantially improved transfer speeds, with throughput now reaching 95 Mbps. On Jabil’s most difficult production transfer, 124 GB worth of data spread across 3,400 files from several sub-folders was sent securely over the public Internet in less than 5 hours.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
National Instruments
Empowering global software development with high-speed data transfers
Using IBM Aspera’s patented high-speed transfer technology, NI synchronizes large software
builds between teams around the world from its centralized data center in Austin, Texas to
significantly accelerate its follow-the-sun development. The deployment has made development
timelines and costs more predictable while reducing the risk of delivery. Now NI is more
responsive to customers and ultimately develops innovative products and features faster.
Business Challenge
To maintain an efficient and continuous development cycle, all updates to the code base from any of NI's remote sites need to be synchronized with its central data center, then synchronized back out to the remote offices.
Transformation
The NI and Aspera teams worked together to develop a tailored solution for multi-site data transfer and synchronization to quickly and securely collect and distribute large software builds.
Results
Build process shortened from four days to four hours
NI R&D teams can now work around the world continually on the latest software builds
Speed innovation and responsiveness to customers
Increased agility for development teams and faster time to value for customers
Predictable delivery timeline and costs
Complete transfers of large files and data sets regardless of size, distance or network conditions with 100 percent reliability
Business challenge story
Enable an efficient and continuous development cycle
Today, more than 6,000 end users dispersed around the world need access to NI’s code bases and
software builds. This includes 2,000 developers that work continually on code bases, product and
test teams that need to access exports and installers, and sales and marketing teams that need
to access full release packages. To maintain an efficient and continuous development cycle, all
updates to the code base from any of the remote sites need to be synchronized with its central
data center, then synchronized back out to the remote offices.
With each file ranging from 1 KB to 32 GBs in size, and an average size of .5 MB, NI’s code
repository had grown to more than 300 TBs. Unreliable HTTP-based data transfers were forcing
teams to wait several days to receive and work on the software builds, negatively impacting
productivity and ultimately response times to customers.
“In my 17 years of experience of working on
large-scale IT projects, the Aspera deployment was the most successful I’ve been involved
with and it imposed the least amount of inconvenience to our users and customers.”
Transformation story
Quickly and securely collect and distribute large software builds
The NI and Aspera teams worked together to develop a tailored solution for multi-site data
transfer and synchronization to quickly and securely collect and distribute large software
builds, even in countries that have restrictive network security and firewall policies and that
are prone to high congestion, latency and packet loss.
The Aspera transfer server software with Aspera Sync is now deployed in 17 of its remote global
locations, all without requiring changes to NI’s R&D workflows. The team is able to centrally
monitor and manage the entire transfer environment using Aspera Console.
Results story
Speed innovation and responsiveness to customers
With Aspera, NI R&D teams can work continually on the latest software builds. Over the last 18
months, the build process was shortened from an average of four days down to four hours. The
teams are able to be more responsive to customers and can innovate more quickly as a result of
the predictable delivery timelines and costs, and due to reduced risks previously associated
with the development build process.
The Aspera solution also helped address a critical, unexpected problem involving a significant
system failure just prior to quarter close. Using Aspera, NI quickly recovered all its files in
hours versus the typical four day recovery time, enabling it to meet its critical shipment
deadline and recognize quarterly revenue.
National Instruments
NI (ni.com) empowers engineers and scientists with a software-centric platform that incorporates modular hardware and an expansive ecosystem. This proven approach puts users firmly in control of defining what they need to accelerate their system design within test, measurement and control. NI’s solution helps build high-performance systems that exceed requirements, quickly adapt to change and ultimately improve the world.
NetApp
Delivering critical data to the customer success team at maximum speed
A comprehensive IBM Aspera solution that enhances the web portal to upload core files and
creates automated workflows that quickly interface with NetApp systems for case ID
validation, core file checking and file routing
“With the speed that Aspera FASP offers, you don't need
a local ingest site. You can actually transfer data from anywhere in the world”
Business Challenge story
Unable to rely on HTTPS transfers for large data files, NetApp would direct customers to a
standard FTP upload site, but they quickly found FTP lacked continuity and reliability – if a
connection broke and the transfer failed, the customer would have to start over from the
beginning causing delays, and extending the time it took to diagnose the problem. As a last
resort for high-priority cases, NetApp occasionally retrieved core files by sending a support
engineer to the customer site to physically load the data onto a drive.
But this method was
expensive, time consuming and did not meet the stringent security that NetApp requires. NetApp
sought a file-transfer solution to provide speed, reliability, security, and the flexibility for
customers to send data from anywhere in the world, whether they are located in Amsterdam, New
York, or Singapore.
Transformation
NetApp successfully implemented a software suite from IBM® Aspera® that included Aspera Point-to-Point, Aspera Connect Server, and the Aspera Console Management Application. This included enhancing the web portal to upload core files via the Aspera Connect Browser Plug-in and creating workflows to interface with NetApp systems for case ID validation, core file checking and file routing. The Connect browser plug-in allows users to upload core files to a centralized Connect Server, while Aspera Point-to-Point transfers files to the appropriate internal destination. Aspera Console monitors the transfer environment and adjusts transfer rates as needed to make sure time-critical projects are prioritized.
Benefits
Aspera maximizes available bandwidth, even on low-capacity networks, allowing NetApp customers to achieve transfer speed increases of 9 to 10 times, bumping up average transfer rates from 1.5 Mbps with HTTPS to 15.5 Mbps using FASP. Benefitting both NetApp and their customers, Aspera software provides the flexibility, speed, and security for clients to send their files to NetApp dependably, and in turn NetApp is able to offer the quick turnaround times and simple, easy-to-use transfer process that makes their support solution an industry leader.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
BlueBee
Speeding clinical results with a cloud-based platform for genomics data
analytics
With an IBM Cloud hosting solution and IBM Aspera software, BlueBee delivers a powerful
offering that accelerates genomics data processing for labs and genomic service providers by
up to 133.9 percent.
Business Challenge
Envisioning a platform designed to help labs and service providers process genomics data more quickly, BlueBee sought a trusted cloud provider to help bring the offering to market.
Transformation
BlueBee chose a powerful IBM Cloud hosting solution, incorporating IBM® Aspera® software to accelerate customer data transfer and IBM Cloud Object Storage technology for scalable storage capacity.
Results
Up to 133.9% faster data processing
for organizations using the cloud-based BlueBee platform for genomics data analysis
Meets customer requirements
with flexible infrastructure options for customized solution delivery
Supports global expansion
With data center presence worldwide and easy, transparent management capabilities
Business challenge story
Tackling the genomics data challenge
For clinical labs, research centers and service providers in the genomics industry, recent
advances in DNA sequencing technology have introduced a new set of challenges. “In the market,
the next big bottleneck is no longer the DNA sequencing itself, but performing the data
analysis,” says Michelle Garred, Head of Sales and Marketing for BlueBee.
Envisioning a solution designed to process ever-increasing volumes of genetic data more quickly
and cost-effectively, BlueBee needed to team with a trusted cloud services provider. The company
sought a cloud hosting platform offering flexible infrastructure options, robust security
capabilities and data center locations worldwide to support global delivery. “For regulatory
reasons, genomic information often must be kept within a certain locality or country,” says
Garred. “We have to be able to store genomic data within the local region of our customers’
choice.”
“With IBM Cloud, you can engineer a system fitted
exactly to the task at hand”
Transformation story
Teaming with IBM for powerful cloud hosting
BlueBee chose an IBM Cloud solution based on the platform’s performance, global data center
presence and flexibility. “A key differentiator is the availability of bare metal servers with
fine-grained capabilities for defining what you need,” says BlueBee Chief Technical Officer Kurt
Florus. “With IBM Cloud, you can engineer a system fitted exactly to the task at hand.”
BlueBee launched its powerful platform for genomics data processing on bare metal server
infrastructure hosted in IBM Cloud data centers throughout Europe and the US. The business
integrated a suite of IBM Aspera® software, which uses the patented IBM Aspera Fast, Adaptive,
and Secure Protocol (FASP®), into its solution to accelerate customer data transfer and IBM
Cloud Object Storage technology to offer virtually unlimited data storage capacity.
Results story
Speeding data processing for faster results
Serving customers across Europe and North America, BlueBee helps clinical and research
organizations deliver diagnostics and other critical results more rapidly and cost-effectively.
The company’s cloud-based platform reduces data transfer time by a reported 75 percent and
accelerates data processing by up to 133.9 percent compared to traditional industry
infrastructure.
With IBM Cloud infrastructure underpinning its offering, BlueBee can adjust solution delivery as
needed. “Some customers need data analysis to be absolutely as fast as possible, and others are
more focused on competitive pricing,” says Garred. “IBM Cloud gives us the choice and
flexibility to provide a service tailored to customer requirements.”
And with IBM Cloud data centers available around the world, BlueBee supports customers in
quickly and easily expanding operations. “When customers want to deploy across a geographical
spread, even where regulations vary from country to country, it’s really almost just the click
of a button,” says Florus. “And even if you have operations on a global scale, you have a single
window where you can see it all.”
BlueBee
Headquartered in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, BlueBee provides cloud-based genomics solutions designed to help organizations accelerate data analysis, reduce costs and deliver results more quickly. Experts from Delft University of Technology and Imperial College London formed the company in 2011 to create a unique genome analytics offering for research and clinical labs.
Solution components
- Aspera
- Cloud Object Storage
GigaScience
Fast transfers improve research data accessibility for life sciences
community
GigaScience needs to upload and download large data sets from accompanying manuscripts to
and from its database, GigaDB. Now content submitters, reviewers, and research users all use
the IBM Aspera Connect Browser Plug-in to upload and download large data sets at maximum
speed.
“Aspera is the only solution currently out there that
can provide a reasonable way for people to access data in a timely manner”
Business Challenge story
GigaScience is an online open-access, open-data life sciences journal, co-published by BGI and BioMed Central, that publishes “big-data” articles covering the full spectrum of biological and biomedical sciences, including fields based on difficult-to-access data such as imaging studies, neuroscience, and systems biology. With a goal of making research reproducible and reusable, research articles transparent, and large-scale data easily accessible and citable, GigaScience hosts the complete data sets associated with each published article in a comprehensive public database, GigaDB. The data sets submitted in support of articles published in the GigaScience journal can reach multiple terabytes in size. GigaScience sought a transfer solution to provide a fast and efficient mechanism for authors, reviewers, and content consumers to upload and download large data sets to and from GigaDB while also providing ease of use for users with varying levels of technological expertise.
Transformation
GigaScience selected IBM® Aspera® Connect Server to rapidly transfer all the data sets that accompanied submitted manuscripts to the GigaScience database and IBM Aspera Console to manage and monitor the entire end-to-end transfer process. Content submitters, reviewers, and research users use the IBM Aspera Connect plug-in to upload and download large data sets at maximum speed.
Benefits
In the past, it could take an entire week for a user to download just a small portion of data. With Aspera, uploads and downloads to GigaDB are fast, reliable, and simple, regardless of the data set size. GigaScience has received positive feedback from users, including one author who was very impressed when a 1.2 TB set of data was fully uploaded in a matter of hours rather than days, a sharp improvement over the previous results seen with FTP. Aspera’s speed, reliability, and ease of use make it possible for GigaScience to realize its goal of improving the accessibility and reproducibility of research and articles for the life science community. With high-speed transfers, GigaScience can review, accept, and publish manuscripts more quickly and return their decisions to the submitter within their target of two weeks.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
- LS: Research and Development
Centre de Regulació Genòmica
Centre de Regulació Genòmica supports cutting-edge research with lightning-fast file
transfer
CRG developed a file transfer platform based on IBM® Aspera® solutions that enables it to
share file packages as large as 500 TB at tremendous speeds, helping universities and
laboratories leverage existing genetic sequencing data to support cutting-edge research
“It's difficult to overstate the levels of performance
that IBM Aspera can deliver... We’ve even heard that some of our requesters were able to secure
investment to upgrade their networking hardware as a result of their positive experiences with
IBM Aspera”
Business Challenge story
Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG) wanted to help worldwide research institutions share genome sequencing data. How can such large amounts of data be transmitted quickly and cost-effectively?
Transformation
CRG developed a file transfer platform based on IBM® Aspera® solutions—enabling it to share files from a 2 petabyte genomics archive, giving researchers rapid access to the data they need for their cutting-edge genetics projects.
Benefits
Today, CRG shares file packages as large as 500 TB at speeds of up to 3 Gbit/s, helping universities and laboratories leverage existing sequencing data to support cutting-edge research.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
- LS: Clinical Genomics
- LS: Core Business Process Effectiveness
- LS: R&D transformation
- LS: Research and Development
Rosen Group
Reliably and securely transfering multi-terabyte data sets more than 300 percent
faster
ROSEN Group is able to more accurately plan and allocate resources while realizing
significant cost savings, and more importantly, speed inspection analysis to better meet
customer deadlines. ROSEN Group deployed IBM Aspera® Shares, IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer
Server and IBM Aspera Console. The deployment improved data transfer speeds by more than 300
percent and provided much needed visibility into its entire transfer environment.
Business Challenge
Enabling fast, easy and reliable delivery of large energy infrastructure inspection data sets, up to several terabytes, to anywhere in the world.
Transformation
IBM Aspera Shares provides a simple and intuitive way to securely and quickly transfer large data to any of ROSEN Group’s 22 worldwide offices; Aspera Console provides complete visibility over the entire transfer environment with ability to prioritize data transfers and fully utilize all available bandwidth.
Results
Speed & Reliability
Aspera provides incredibly fast and reliable transfers, with automatic retry and restart from the point of interruption for partial or failed transfers
Security & User Access
Data integrity verifications for each transmitted block, protecting data throughout the transfer process. Also provided single sign-on for seamless access with employees’ Smart Cards
Ease-of-use
Aspera’s intuitive user experience allows every team member at ROSEN Group to easily start sharing files at high-speed with little or no training
Business challenge story
Seeking cost-efficient global data transfer
Field technicians examine customer assets such as pipelines, refineries, plants, tanks, vessels,
wind turbines, trains, and telecommunication towers. These inspections generate inspection data
that must be shared with one or more of the 22 offices and technology & research centers around
the world for analysis. ROSEN Group needed a reliable and secure high-speed data transfer
solution that provided complete visibility over the entire transfer environment to predictably
complete projects.
With individual files between 500 MB and several GBs and entire data sets between 50 GB up to
several terabytes, traditional transfer technologies were much too slow or were simply
impractical. In order to prevent any potential corruption of files, employees manually checked
the data integrity before and after data transfers to resend any missing files. This problem
regularly required significant time by employees and slowed down the end-to-end process
greatly.
For larger data sets, ROSEN Group was forced to ship USB drives, which took as long as a week
due to customs. Also during peak periods throughout the month, USB drives were shipped on a
daily basis, which became costly and time consuming.
Efficiency, reliability and speed were critical requirements for ROSEN Group and its customers
since the failure of an energy company’s infrastructure could have significant consequences to
the ecology and human populations.
“Aspera is now a critical part of our growing
success. It gives us the ability to become aware of problems and to address them much more
quickly to better serve our customers.”
Transformation story
High-speed transfers and complete visibility
Being familiar with Aspera, ROSEN Group decided to test Aspera Shares in four of its more
critical locations during its proof-of-concept – Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Germany (Lingen),
Netherlands (Oldenzaal) and United States (Houston, Texas). As a testament to its ease of
installation and use, employees immediately started using Aspera Shares without any training,
resulting in exceptionally positive feedback as data transfers were delivered 300 percent
faster. After a very successful evaluation, Aspera software was deployed in all of its 22
offices and technology & research centers around the world in just two weeks.
ROSEN Group deployed Aspera Shares and transfer servers and added Aspera Console for complete
visibility over all transfers and ability to prioritize transfers and maximize use of available
bandwidth.
Results story
300 percent faster transfer of energy inspection data sets
With the huge increase in the speed and reliability of data transfers and full visibility of the
Aspera deployment, ROSEN Group can now accurately plan, allocate resources and predictably
deliver large inspection analyses to customers while also achieving significant cost savings.
Aspera Shares enables employees to begin working with inspection data immediately by providing
email notifications to all recipients when transfers have completed. In addition, key employees
can access Aspera Console to track important transfer completion times to assist in planning and
allocating staffing resources and communicating the timing of project deliverables to customers.
The IT department has the ability to prioritize transfers from within Aspera Console and use the
Vlink feature to cap bandwidth utilization based on time of day and business needs to ensure
these transfers finish as fast as possible without impacting other existing network traffic.
Additionally, since all Aspera technology and solutions include built-in data integrity
verification, ROSEN Group was able to eliminate the time-intensive burden of performing manual
checks for corrupted files.
"By using Aspera to transfer large files in only minutes or hours, we no longer have to ship USB
drives, which has significantly reduced some costs. More importantly, it’s drastically increased
our team's productivity and turnaround by improving the flow of data globally," said Heiner
Susse, IT Service & Product Manager, ROSEN Group.
With the success of the initial deployment, more ROSEN Group teams have requested to use Aspera
software throughout the enterprise for a variety of use cases. While Aspera was originally
deployed for transfers between offices by the core business, it has quickly expanded for use by
many field technicians transferring large inspection data to the offices from dispersed sites
all over the world. Aspera’s high-speed data transfer solutions are now used for long-term
archival globally. Additionally, Aspera is used to complete backups to the nearest office from
remote locations including remote offices where no IT infrastructure exists.
“Aspera is now a critical part of our growing success. It gives us the ability to become aware
of problems and to address them much more quickly to better serve our customers,” concluded
Susse.
Rosen Group
The ROSEN Group, headquartered in Stans, Switzerland, is a global provider of inspection and integrity products, services and research and development for safe and reliable operations of the oil and gas and broader energy industry.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Marine Services for Oil Exploration
Ship-to-Shore High Speed Transfer Solution for Offshore Marine Services
A large marine services company has deployed a comprehensive solution of Aspera transfer
software on approximately 30 of its vessels to enable high speed, reliable transfer of bulk
data from ship to shore and back. The IBM Aspera solution replaces expensive helicopter and
other physical data movement to and from the vessels with high speed and reliable network
transfer. The company is now able to transfer large data sets generated by its on-vessel HPC
processing at full bandwidth capacity of the on-board satellite connections and WiMax IP
connections, including automatically ramping up to use the full WiMax bandwidth as the
vessels move into range.
Business Challenge
Moving large seismic data sets for oil exploration from ship to shore to accelerate field research and analysis.
Transformation
Aspera high-speed transfer servers deployed on-premises in the on-shore data center and Aspera transfer clients deployed on a host computer on each of the vessels..
Results
Remarkable Speed
Transfers at the full available bandwidth capacity of the satellite connection and quickly ramps up to 40 Mbps+ when vessels move into higher capacity WiMAX zones.
Guaranteed data integrity
Guarantees data is transferred with 100% integrity even with low quality connectivity including high packet loss and disconnects.
Robust to network outages
Automatically retries and resumes transfers from the point of interruption to reduce the impact of network outages
Business challenge story
Speeding ship to shore data transfers
The start-up costs for setting up a new drilling platform offshore can be extremely high –
typically starting at $1 billion USD – and thus marine services to vet candidate-drilling
locations are critical to increasing the likelihood of discovering a productive drilling site,
and maximizing the return on this investment. An effective marine services company uses a
variety of high precision seismic measurement and analysis techniques to assess the quality of a
potential drilling site. These techniques use data intensive high performance computing (HPC)
processes with preliminary result data that has in the past been physically transported to shore
for early analysis, e.g. by expensive helicopter or other means. This process is costly and
limited in scale and could be dramatically more effective if the resultant data could be
transferred directly to shore for early analysis over IP networks.
This leading marine services company was familiar with Aspera’s high-speed transfer software,
having used it for several years for terrestrial seismic file and data transfers. As higher
bandwidth satellite IP connections and WiMAX bandwidth became available on its vessels, the
company decided to capitalize on the opportunity and begin digital transfer of its data directly
from ship to shore. Additionally, the company recognized that the same technology platform could
solve the challenges of getting critical files such as documents, data sets and instructional
videos out to crews to allow them to remain on the water and operate more effectively for longer
periods of time. Finally, the company had familiarity with the Aspera APIs and recognized that
the investment in the Aspera software platform could allow for future integration with the data
pipeline for real-time transfer of growing files and data sets with Aspera’s byte stream APIs.
Transformation story
IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server and Endpoints
The solution consists of the IBM Aspera High-speed Transfer Server software deployed at the
company’s data center on shore, and IBM Aspera High-speed Transfer Endpoint software on a host
computer on each of the vessels. The endpoint computer mounts the same storage used by an HPC
cluster used for data analytics such that newly generated files and directories are
automatically sent via the built-in watch folder capability in the Aspera endpoint. The
watchfolder transfers automatically send files and directories as they are ready on the source
system and provides automatic retry and resume of interrupted files and directories from the
point where transfer left off in the case of a network outage, which is common in these distant
and highly mobile situations. Operators also take advantage of the built-in command line
transfer binary, ‘ascp’ for automated scripting of transfers in analytics pipelines.
The IBM Aspera Shares web application is deployed on a host at the company’s data center on
shore, providing a secure authenticated and easy-to-use web interface for teams to publish files
for crews on the vessels to browse and download. Each end user has access to only those
directories (“shares”) to which he or she has permission and can browse and download documents,
videos and data files directly to any host on the vessel running the IBM Aspera Connect browser
extension.
Administrators can easily configure directories on the server storage with fine-grained access
control by user or user group including browse, upload, and download permissions via the Shares
interface; changes are automatically visible to end users on shore and the crews at sea allowing
for easy collaboration around documents, videos and data files regardless of file size or
quantity. The scalability of Aspera Shares and performance of the Aspera FASP protocol ensure
that directories with millions of files or very large files can be browsed and downloaded with
ease over wireless connections.
Results story
Enhanced marine services from faster, more reliable transfers
“Transfers over the satellite connections are consistently 6-8 Mbps with Aspera FASP (at full
available band-width capacity) and ramp up to 40 Mbps+ when the vessels move into the WiMAX zone
and bandwidth capacity increases, noticeably much faster,” said the lead system operator.
Encryption at rest and in transit built into the Aspera FASP protocol ensures files stored on
the storage exposed by the Aspera server host remain private and can be decrypted only by
authorized teams and users. Finally, the company can connect Aspera Shares to its LDAP, Active
Directory and Single Sign On systems allowing for scalable user authentication and security as
the system’s use grows.
Marine Services for Oil Exploration
A large oil and gas marine services provider.
Solution Category
- Aspera
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Providing a fast and reliable data migration platform for the world’s biggest beer
brewer
The company has transformed significantly over the last few years through a series of
mergers and acquisitions, which have resulted in a sprawling estate of technology systems
and tremendous amounts of data, all of which had to be integrated into AB InBev’s existing
infrastructure. AB InBev was looking for a fast, highly reliable, but cost-effective way of
migrating massive amounts of data into its information systems, so it turned to IBM Aspera
for its proven high-speed migration and synchronization solutions. The technology has
reduced the risks associated with large-scale data migrations and saved valuable time while
eliminating complexity.
Business Challenge
Following a large-scale acquisition, AB InBev was tasked with finding a way to reliably and securely migrate a vast amount of data from multiple mission-critical systems in a very fast, cost-efficient and risk-free way. Traditional storage replication technologies were considered but not feasible as heterogeneous, incompatible storage systems were in play.
Transformation
AB InBev turned to IBM Aspera for its High-Speed Transfer Server software to reduce the risks associated with large-scale data migrations and provide incredible time savings. Aspera Console was also incorporated to provide visualizations and data insights.
Results
75% less time to migrate
Per terabyte migrated, with data migrations saving valuable costs by freeing up its staff to focus on other areas
Assured data quality
With highly reliable data transport to minimize the risk of any rollbacks project delays
Full transfer visibility
Of the entire environment with data-driven insights to identify sub-optimal configurations for AB InBev to enhance in real-time
Business challenge story
Integrating massive amounts of data post-acquisition
Following the acquisition of SAB Miller in October 2016, AB InBev was faced with the complex
challenge of how to integrate vast amounts of data from multiple data centers in various
regions. Data center migrations always present a significant amount of complexity, raising
questions around how to integrate different production environments in a minimal amount of time.
There is also a risk that data can be lost or only partially transferred during the migration.
As its global lead enterprise architect, Manu Boudewyn was looking for solutions that would help
AB InBev with its major data center consolidation and relocation activities, covering hundreds
of business-critical applications and petabytes of data.
“Data center and cloud migrations typically bring a variety of challenges and their complexity
is often underestimated,” he says. “Besides the challenging network coexistence problems we
typically encounter, technology architecture foundations are heterogeneous and both
infrastructure and application service providers change during the migrations, which further
amplifies the complexity.”
In support of its industrialized and proven migration methodology, AB InBev required a proven
solution for all of its tier 1 applications that could provide a sustainable, high-speed
connection between data centers without causing business disruption, even when over 15 network
devices from a variety of infrastructure providers are in the data path simultaneously
supporting critical business transactions.
“In digital transformation, every second matters and business outages – especially for global
companies – can be incredibly painful. Because of these challenges, we’ve always been
architecting to ensure maximal business continuity, irrespective of the circumstances,” added
Boudewyn.
Transformation story
Data migrations in a fraction of the time
To reduce the complexity involved in data migration and ease the burden on staff, AB InBev
deployed elements from the robust and scalable Aspera transfer stack, giving staff access to a
solution that guarantees performance irrespective of transfer distance, file size or volume, and
network conditions.
Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server enabled AB InBev to transfer an unlimited number of files of
any size concurrently, while server administrators had access to a powerful set of management
features – such as the ability to adjust bandwidth targets and configure granular access control
settings – throughout the migration process.
Furthermore, Aspera Sync provided high-performing and scalable file replication and
synchronization while business operations remained online, enabling AB InBev to scale its
processes up and out for maximum performance over wide area networks. This software helped the
company deal with an extremely high number of small (unstructured) objects, while also using the
same technology for shipping big Oracle datafile stores.
AB InBev also incorporated the Aspera Console for full visibility into its transfer environment,
providing visualizations of data usage and valuable insights into the performance of individual
data transfers. Aspera Console enabled AB InBev to pinpoint peaks and troughs in speed and
assist with troubleshooting by identifying any sub-optimal configurations in order to optimize
the process. Finally, it also helped AB InBev plan its migrations more accurately.
“Both in Latin America and Europe we’ve been successful in using IBM Aspera, even for
non-traditional use cases,” says Boudewyn. “I’ve studied Aspera’s high-speed data transfer
technology and adaptive secure transfer protocol in detail and followed the product’s evolution
closely over the past few years – even before the IBM acquisition. The technology, along with
the company’s heritage of working with international media and broadcasting companies and other
time-critical content providers, were key factors.
“Aspera has provided us with some great architecture capabilities – most notably their adaptive
rate controller and unique high-speed FASP protocol which have proved to be key enablers to
helping us accelerate big data movements whenever time is of the essence.”
Results story
A completely reliable process that takes a fraction of the time
AB InBev has transformed the way it migrates large quantities of data, using the Aspera stack to
minimize time and risk. Before deploying Aspera technology, it typically took 2.5 hours for AB
InBev to transfer a 1TB environment and data was frequently only partially transferred, or there
were other issues around data quality. With Aspera, 1TB took less than half an hour to transfer
in their recent use case, equating to approximately 75% in time savings on average – with the
added benefit of significantly reducing risk and ensuring delivery.
Following some careful customization and fine-tuning, AB InBev has been able to transfer
hundreds of SAP and non-SAP business applications all within the shortest amount of time. For
example, they reliably transferred up to 75TB concurrently during their peak migration windows
in just 29 hours (quality assurance inclusive). Under heavy usage with other network traffic
running on its 10 Gbps network, AB InBev achieved transfer speeds up to 6.9Gbps to fully utilize
the remaining bandwidth and accommodate the other traffic.
“Along the path we still faced various challenges while transferring millions of files over a
seven-month period. Working over weekends to ensure minimum downtime, with only a 24-hour
maximum outage window, Aspera’s committed product management team was integral in helping us
isolate any issues as we moved along our challenging journey. We’re looking forward to teaming
up with Aspera again in the near future whenever petabytes are in play.”
“Aspera has provided us with some great architecture
capabilities – most notably their adaptive rate controller and unique high-speed FASP
protocol which have proved to be key enablers to helping us accelerate big data movements
whenever time is of the essence”
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) is the world’s largest brewing company and one of the fastest moving consumer packaged goods organizations. Headquartered in Belgium, AB InBev is a $55B worldwide business, comprising a portfolio of nearly 500 global and regional beer brands across 100 countries. These include notable brands such as Stella Artois, Budweiser, Corona, Leffe, Beck’s, Hoegaarden and Brahma, as well as multiple leading craft beers.
Solution Category
- Aspera
American Airlines
The route to customer experience transformation is through the cloud
To become more responsive to customer needs, American Airlines needed a new technology
platform and a new approach to development that would help it deliver digital self-service
tools and customer value more rapidly across its enterprise. IBM is helping the airline
migrate some of its critical applications to the IBM Cloud while using new methodology to
create innovative applications quickly while improving the customer experience.
Business Challenge
Customer experience is a key competitive differentiator for airlines, and increasingly depends on digital channels. How could American meet its customers’ appetite for instant information and services?
Transformation
Working with IBM to migrate some of their key legacy customer-facing applications to VMware HCX on IBM Cloud, while simultaneously transforming them to a cloud-native based microservices architecture is enabling the world's largest airline to innovate faster in response to changing customer needs.
Results
Cost savings
by avoiding existing upgrade costs via a migration to the IBM Cloud
Improved
operational reliability, productivity and end customer response times
Faster
development and release of new apps
Business challenge story
Taking to the digital skies
In the highly competitive airline industry, customer experience is a major point of
differentiation – and digital channels are increasingly important.
American Airlines wanted to provide convenient digital services for customers and understood
there was an opportunity to remove the constraints of the existing legacy architecture,
platform, organization, development and operations approaches. Customer-facing applications were
based on monolithic code, duplicated and managed in silos. Every change required the same work
in up to three places, each managed by different teams.
To respond better and faster to customer needs, American Airlines needed to transform the way
they worked to take advantage of new technology features. There was a need to update its
technology stack, further increase agility, and introduce DevOps concepts while leveraging an
open and flexible cloud platform.
“IBM was pivotal in helping us work in a different
way. I think we even surprised ourselves on how fast we could put the app into customers'
hands.”
Transformation story
Migrate, transform, operate
Migrate: IBM’s comprehensive proposal addressed American’s immediate and long term operational
concerns through a seamless migration of on-premise servers to IBM Cloud’s Infrastructure as a
Service with VMware Cloud Foundation solution.
Transform: IBM also proposed to accelerate the transformation of American’s application
development, organization and skills, based on its IBM Garage Method. As IBM and American
jointly developed the new cloud-native apps in Cloud Foundry on IBM Public Cloud Platform as a
Service, the old components would be retired.
Operate: The solution brings operations into the development squads, and leverages IBM’s Cloud
Solutions Operations Center to provide 24-hour application support and management services, with
the IBM team located both onsite at American’s location and at an IBM off-shore location.
Accelerated development: The move to microservices
During the negotiations for the big-picture transformation contract, American Airlines asked IBM
for help with an urgent requirement – which would also act as a proof-point for IBM’s proposed
way of working. The airline wanted to give customers better self-service capabilities in the
event of a forced rebooking due to a major weather event disrupting operations.
While American’s algorithms typically rebook passengers on the next best flight, customers had
to call the reservation desk or visit an airport agent if they wanted to discuss other options.
American wanted customers to be able to see other possibilities and update their flight
selection via the website, mobile app or at a self-service kiosk.
With the busy summer season approaching, the company president challenged American to deliver a
new customer-facing Dynamic Rebooking app within just a few months – a challenge that could not
be achieved with the legacy approach and would have taken at least twice that amount of time.
American approached IBM for help, and keen to prove its credentials, IBM stepped up to the
challenge. The centerpiece of the IBM transformation is the IBM Garage Method, a holistic
methodology covering technology, people, processes and organization. As the first step in the
Dynamic Rebooking project, IBM and American Airlines’ developers met and rapidly built more than
200 user stories to guide the development of the new app.
Next, the teams identified their first MVP (minimum viable product – the simplest possible
application that meets the business requirements) and started to code. The use of microservices,
paired programming and test-driven development enabled a highly parallelized approach that
accelerated the creation of the new cloud-native code. Microservices allowed each business
function to be broken down into simple, reusable functions that can be composed and called as
many times as required by any connected platforms.
After just four and a half months, the Dynamic Rebooking app was released to production in eight
airports, and steadily rolled out to more airports while testing, development and updates
continued in the background.
Jason Hobbs, Senior Manager, Application Development at American Airlines, says: “IBM was
pivotal in helping us work in a different way. I think we even surprised ourselves on how fast
we could put the app into customers' hands.”
“From a process, culture and education standpoint,
IBM has been there every step of the way, helping us keep pace with customer expectations.”
Results story
Fast, efficient and convenient
American Airlines launched Dynamic Rebooking in less than half the time expected, and now has an
app that is easy to enhance based on customer feedback. Hosting on the IBM Cloud Foundry
platform paid further dividends when Hurricane Irma struck. The business decided overnight to
deploy the app globally to all of American's airports.
Patrick Morin, Managing Director of Customer Technology, American Airlines, comments: “One of
our expectations with the IBM Cloud was that the hyper-scale should relieve concerns around
infrastructure when rolling out an application globally. When the hurricanes hit, we put that to
the test and our confidence turned out to be well-founded: the application worked flawlessly,
and we’ve since rolled it out to all 300-plus airports without any issues.”
American has received great customer feedback on the new app, which provides vital information
and control to customers when travel plans are disrupted. Customers almost always choose the
airline’s first suggestion: a clear validation of American’s underlying algorithms.
Julie Rath, Managing Director, Customer Service Recovery at American Airlines, comments: “The
Dynamic Rebooking tool finds the best solution for each customer, walks them through the
rebooking process, handles the ticket reissue, serves up the boarding pass, and sends a reroute
message for their baggage. By giving control back to the customer, we make a positive impact on
their experience.”
Deep transformation
While Dy namic Rebooking was in development, IBM and American also worked on the bigger
migration
of aa.com, customer mobile and kiosk apps to IBM Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, using VMware
HCX on IBM Cloud to automate the migration of hundreds of VMware virtual machines to the IBM
Cloud. This sliced six months from the original timeline, enabling American to avoid a looming
capital expenditure to refresh its existing hardware. Migrating to IBM Cloud also significantly
improved server performance and reliability, and reduced the end user response time.
IBM assumed responsibility for operational managed services for both the migrated and
transformed environments via a single support model for multi-cloud environments.
With customer-facing apps running on open platforms in the IBM Cloud, and a cloud-native
approach to development, American is achieving its key objective of innovating faster in
response to changing customer requirements. The airline can also plug in other pre-built
services on IBM Cloud, such as web load balancing, weather forecasting and machine learning. The
coding time previously dedicated to maintenance is now available for new requirements, helping
American innovate for its customers and outpace competitors. Beyond the technology, American has
more closely aligned its business and technology organizations to work together in rapid cycles
of co-creation to meet customer needs.
Maya Leibman, EVP & Chief Information Officer, American Airlines, concludes: “From a process,
culture and education standpoint, IBM has been there every step of the way, helping us keep pace
with customer expectations.”
American Airlines
American Airlines Group Inc. was formed on December 9, 2013 with the closing of the merger
between American Airlines and US Airways Group. The company has more than 120,000 employees and
lists on NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol AAL. In 2015, its stock joined the
S&P 500 index.
American Airlines and American Eagle offer an average of nearly 6,700 flights per day to nearly
350 destinations in more than 50 countries. American has hubs in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort
Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. American is a
founding member of the oneworld® alliance, whose members serve more than 1,000 destinations with
about 14,250 daily flights to over 150 countries.
Solution Category
- Cloud Infrastructure
- IBM Cloud Virtual Servers
- IBM Garage
- Watson IoT Platform
Amdocs
Solutions Delivered…at SPEED
Reuven Leibovich - Systems Integration Performance Expert at Amdocs describes the challenges
in delivering massive solution updates to their highly dispersed clients (IBM Aspera).
“… millions of files and petabytes of data have been
moving via the system, and it functions like a well-oiled machine”
Business Challenge
Amdocs provides DevOps-driven solutions and DR capability that must be delivered all over the world, and the associated files and data are extremely large (petabytes) in size. Previously, their transfers could sometimes lag or have to be restarted, and they would have a transfer backlog which could cost them days and impact client service.
Transformation
Reuven Leibovich is a Systems Integration Performance Expert at Amdocs and he describes the critical nature of data transfer to their client services. IBM Aspera is now the standard for secure, high-speed data transfer at Amdocs.
Solution Category
- Cloud
Aquafin NV
Reliably and securely exchanging hundreds of files to significantly lower costs and
overhead
To allow employees and its many engineering firm partners to reliably and securely exchange
hundreds of files each day, Aquafin integrated IBM Aspera FaspexTM with the Alfresco content
services platform. Since deploying the Aspera solution, users are able to upload studies,
simulations, and video files, then share packages amongst different workgroups.
Business Challenge
Exchanging files reliably and securely between employees, remote sites and engineering partners with less administration effort of its content services platform.
Transformation
IBM Aspera Faspex tightly integrated with Alfresco using the Aspera SDK to provide data transfers at maximum speed. With Aspera, Aquafin can minimize the platform administration burden while enabling all employees and partners to exchange files securely and reliably, regardless of size, transfer distance and network conditions.
Results
Ensures
reliable file sending to improve collaboration
Reduces costs
and unnecessary security risks by eliminating the need for physical shipments
Integrates
with custom and third-party applications, such as the Alfresco content services platform, to reduce administration overhead and create a simplified user experience.
Business challenge story
Streamlined administration for secure file sharing
Each day, individuals and teams need to share and exchange AutoCAD simulations, various studies
and inspection MP4 videos between employees at headquarters, remote sites, and as many as 100
external engineering firms. Using Aquafin’s legacy file transfer solution, teams struggled to
access and download large files, which often required shipping DVDs. This not only increased the
risk of unforeseen delays from lost, stolen or damaged shipments, but it also decreased
productivity and created unnecessary security risks.
In addition, Aquafin administrators had to dedicate several hours each week to provisioning and
removing intermittent internal and external users, which significantly increased administrative
overhead. More importantly, this delayed access to the solution so that users were unable to
transfer files quickly.
In order to streamline administration while ensuring secure and reliable file sharing, Aquafin
needed a scalable and easy to use solution that would minimize or eliminate file transfer
delays, reduce administrative burdens and easily integrate with its Alfresco content services
platform.
“The Aspera deployment created a frictionless
experience for both our end users and our external partners, making the exchange of files
much easier regardless of size, which has improved overall collaboration.”
Transformation story
Enabling Design and Research Collaboration
Aquafin evaluated several solutions and found that only Aspera met all its requirements, which
included secure and reliable file transfers, easy integration with its content services
platform, and a user-
friendly experience. Aspera stood apart for its rich set of APIs in the Aspera Software
Development Kit (SDK), enterprise-grade security and the ease of onboarding users with little
training or instruction.
Aquafin integrated Aspera Faspex with Alfresco, which included deploying the Aspera server
software in its data center in Aartselaar, Belgium. Employees can now use Alfresco seamlessly to
exchange files and data sets securely at high speeds between dispersed individuals, teams and
sites. End users only need Aspera Connect, a lightweight, self-installing app that powers its
web-based transfers. With Faspex, Aquafin can easily create workgroups and quickly send files to
multiple remote locations at once based on configured user groups for teams and projects such as
new treatment plant designs, sewage pipelines inspections, or reporting to government agencies.
Recipients are provided with an email alert notification when new files and packages are ready
for download while senders can set up notifications upon successful download by each recipient.
Results story
Creating a frictionless experience
Throughout the year, up to 300 Aquafin employees and as many as 100 external engineering agencies
rely on Aspera’s high-speed data transfer capabilities. By deploying Aspera, the company
eliminated the need to ship DVDs for larger files. This generated significant cost and time
savings, while increasing employee and third-party productivity and minimizing security risks.
Aquafin also benefits from Aspera’s enterprise- grade security, which includes encryption in
transit and at rest, user authentication, and data integrity verification.
Even on days when data transfer volumes jump up to 50 gigabytes per day, Aspera easily maintains
its fast, reliable, and secure data transfers without impacting other traffic on its network.
As the company continues to increase the number of end users and the volume of files
transferred, it has been able to easily manage the entire environment from its centralized
web-based transfer management application, which offers comprehensive user and server
administration capabilities.
“The Aspera deployment created a frictionless experience for both our employees and external
partners, making the exchange of files much easier regardless of size, which has improved
overall collaboration,” said Steven Vispoel, IT Architect, Aquafin. “We’re confident that with
Aspera, we can also quickly scale to accommodate large increases in transfer demands while fully
utilizing available bandwidth with virtually 100 percent reliability.”
Aquafin NV
Established in 1990, Belgian-based Aquafin is responsible for the design and expansion of wastewater treatment plants and the sanitation of household wastewater from municipal sewers throughout the Flemish region, accounting for more than 5,000 square miles. Every day, two billion liters of sewage water are treated before being released into streams and rivers that are vital to protecting the environment as well as fish, birds and amphibians.
Solution Category
- Aspera
A Leading Global Bank
Improving Banker Productivity with Fast, Secure File Sharing using IBM Aspera
A global financial institution provides its 10,000+ banking professionals with a content
management system to securely share sensitive documents and files for corporate banking
services such as M&A transactions. The Windows based application is core to how the bank
manages file sharing of highly sensitive financial and business documents. IBM Aspera allows
bank employees to view, edit, download and share files with teams around the world. Files
accessed through the desktop client are stored in data centers across North America, Europe
and Asia. HTTP provides the transfer backbone for all data movement across the application,
data center and local users.
Business Challenge
Enable over 10,000 banking professionals to share large collections of confidential and time sensitive files across global corporate banking teams within tight timelines.
Transformation
Using the Aspera software developer kit (SDK) and APIs, the bank integrated IBM Aspera Streaming into their legacy asset management software enabling remote teams to securely upload, download, view, edit and share individual files and whole directories at high-speed.
Results
500% faster downloads
Faster global download speeds enabled remote teams to collaborate in real time, boosting productivity and accelerating deal cycles.
Cost reduction
Reduced the need for costly and poor performing WAN acceleration devices, which the bank projected to significantly reduce CapEx
Easy & secure to launch
By integrating the secure Aspera technology into its legacy client application, the bank saved considerable time training employees on a new application.
Business challenge story
Accelerating M&A deals with high-speed data transfer
Every day, thousands of bankers log into this crucial application. Time sensitive and
confidential files including terms sheets, financial statements, market reports, and contracts
are shared with teams around the world. Individual files range in size from a few megabytes to
over a gigabyte in size. Despite the relatively small size of files, teams struggled to access
and download critical documents in a timely fashion.
The challenges were amplified for employees in remote locations moving data over high latency
global networks. Often times teams were accessing files stored in datacenters thousands of miles
away in another country. In one test, it took an employee nearly 20 minutes to download a single
file roughly 100MB in size.
Considering teams are frequently downloading whole directories and iterating on files multiple
times, these slowdowns can add days and weeks to time-sensitive business transactions. With
thousands of new files being uploaded weekly, the bank knew they needed an alternative solution
to HTTP-based transfers.
Transformation story
Staggering speed for secure, instant file access and editing
The bank’s application provides critical, custom-built security, tracking and auditing
capabilities. Simply replacing with off-the-shelf software or cloud file sharing was not an
option. The bank needed an embedded approach. Initially, they tried using WAN acceleration
hardware appliances. Costly and hard to manage, these devices only produced a 5% improvement in
transfer speeds, hardly noticeable to the end user.
Starting with a simple proof of concept, the bank tested IBM Aspera high-speed transfer
software. The improvements were staggering, reducing transfers from minutes and hours to
seconds. In addition to performance, Aspera’s flexible software-based architecture and SDK’s
meant high-speed transfer could be easily integrated into the bank’s existing application.
After a successful evaluation, the bank moved forward with a full deployment. Clusters of Aspera
High-speed Transfer Servers were placed in each of the data centers around the world providing
scalability, redundancy, and most importantly, high-speed data transfer.
Additionally, the bank chose IBM Aspera’s SDK and IBM Aspera Streaming APIs to integrate
high-speed streaming into the client application. Rather than starting and completing a transfer
by reading and writing a whole file from disk, the Aspera streaming integration allows bankers
to access and edit files instantly as the data arrives in a stream, significantly reducing load
times. IBM Aspera Console was deployed as well to provide a simple web UI to manage transfer
logging, control and reporting.
Results story
Significantly reducing costs and improving productivity
Across all tests, Aspera blew away the competition and existing technology. Between international
offices, transfer speeds improved over 500%, delivering files in seconds compared to the nearly
20 minutes per file previously experienced. IBM Aspera’s revolutionary streaming software
enables global bankers to access and edit files in real time without delay regardless of where
the data is stored, improving productivity and accelerating time-sensitive corporate banking
deals and activities. Because Aspera’s streaming technology integrates into the bank’s existing
content management platform, no retraining is required for the thousands of end users of the
application.
Aspera’s software-based deployment model was also a key deciding factor. Normally, it could take
over a year to test and launch a new application. With Aspera, the bank went from discussion to
pilot to deployment in under 2 months. The flexibility and ease of use enabled the bank to
revolutionize application performance in record time.
With Aspera, the bank expects to significantly reduce capital expenditures in the first year of
the project. Aspera’s distance agnostic high-speed data transfer capabilities enable the bank to
consolidate storage where it is most cost effective and reduce the need for expensive, poor
performing WAN acceleration hardware appliances.
Finally, Aspera’s robust encryption in transit and at rest, full transfer reporting and control,
and integration with the legacy application’s existing security capabilities helps ensure the
bank’s most sensitive data is fully protected.
A Leading Global Bank
An international banking service provider uses Aspera to improve productivity and efficiency.
Solution Category
- Aspera
Afrostream
High-speed transfer of local and international African and African-American content to
and from IBM Cloud
Afrostream uses IBM® Aspera® On Demand to speed content delivery to its VOD platform. The
solution unlocks the benefits of the IBM Cloud, streamlining Afrostream’s data-intensive
workflow beginning with media uploads from studios and content providers through final
distribution of African movies and TV shows
“Using Aspera as the preferred means to ingest high
resolution content has significantly accelerated our internal workflow, enabling us to provide
content to viewers faster than ever before and to further expand and drive growth in this niche
market”
Business Challenge story
To gather quality entertainment for its customer base, Afrostream signed content deals with major studios and independent American, African and British distributors that need to upload terabytes of digital content over the WAN to the company’s data center every day. While the company's main office is located in California, the technical team is in Nantes, France, its IBM SoftLayer storage server is housed in IBM’s data center in San Jose, California, and Afrostream’s content providers and viewers are globally dispersed. Afrostream needed to ensure content could be reliably and efficiently moved across continents. This process was further complicated by the large volume and size of files that needed to be transferred, with digital files typically varying between 10 gigabytes to 1 terabyte each.
Transformation
Afrostream easily deployed IBM® Aspera® On Demand, which is tightly integrated with IBM Cloud for fast and reliable processing and distribution of content. With Aspera’s patented FASP® transport protocol natively integrated into IBM Cloud, the Aspera solution enables high-speed transfers directly to IBM Cloud object storage and interfaces with several other workflows to streamline the entire process from ingest to decoding and transcoding for play-out on multiple end-user devices.
Benefits
Aspera On Demand is easy to use and enables their business partners to effortlessly submit content to Afrostream’s server. Afrostream simply creates an account and provides login credentials to each content provider, and they can immediately begin transferring assets directly to Afrostream’s IBM Cloud Storage. Afrostream achieved significant acceleration and optimization of entire transfer process to and from IBM’s cloud storage, reduced content turnaround time from 3 days to under 12 hours, and increased ingest volume that now reaches 1,000 hours of aggregated content per month.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
- Aspera on Demand
BASE Media Cloud
Providing a secure and resilient data repository to speed up the delivery of broadcast
content
BASE Media Cloud powers a global media distribution portal and centralized storage hub using
IBM Cloud, IBM Aspera and IBM Cloud Object Storage technology.
Business Challenge
BASE Media Cloud was tasked with developing an easy-to-use, cost-effective file storage and distribution service for a sports broadcast distribution company. The platform had to meet data security, resiliency and redundancy requirements, and include a range of functionality in one bespoke solution.
Transformation
The BASE team used the IBM Cloud platform, IBM Aspera on Cloud and IBM Cloud Object Storage to power the global media distribution portal and provide a centralised storage hub for LCTV’s production partners around the world.
Results
Centralised processes
The solution provides a single storage hub for all production suppliers to submit content in a secure manner, as well as an outbound distribution portal for the LCTV sales team
Increased efficiency
LCTV staff can now easily log in to their web browser and perform global content delivery, which would have previously taken days to complete
Cost savings
The solution removes the need for physical copies of data and for hard drives to be shipped around the world by expensive couriers
Business challenge story
Fast and secure global content distribution
BASE Media Cloud was approached by sports broadcast distribution company LCTV to provide an
easy-to-use, web-based file storage and distribution service at a low cost that required minimal
technical expertise and maintenance support. LCTV had been working with a number of different
traditional media facilities in the UK and USA. In each case, a variety of content delivery
methods were used, including digital tape and file-based masters. However, work was primarily
manual, utilizing minimal automation, which was costly and time consuming. Furthermore, as a
result of engaging traditional facilities for the work, the LCTV team had no direct access to,
or ownership of their own data, which proved frustrating and impacted their efficiency.
LCTV wanted a self-service cloud solution that was fully managed by BASE Media Cloud so that the
LCTV team could be freed up to concentrate on the core business of selling and distributing
sports broadcast content more efficiently and at a lower cost. Key technical requirements
included data security, resiliency and redundancy with instant access backup, archive and file
sharing capabilities. Additional functionality that included simple file checking, automated
transcoding and automated notifications services needed to be integrated into one bespoke
solution for LCTV.
“LCTV is proud to be working with Base Media Cloud
and IBM and has worked with the team to create a single file type for all our programming,
delivering hundreds of hours of content each year to something like 100 TV networks around
the world”
Transformation story
Powerful cloud-based file transfer and storage
As an IBM Business Partner and existing large-scale user of the IBM Cloud platform, BASE Media
Cloud’s solutions team turned to the proven IBM Aspera On Cloud file transfer service upon which
to build the back-bone of LCTV’s global media distribution portal. By using the underlying IBM
Cloud Object Storage, with built-in erasure coding of data across 3 separate UK data centres,
the team was able to provide LCTV with increased data security, resiliency and geographic
redundancy, out of the box.
IBM is responsible for the quality of the underlying storage stack, data centres and support,
while the BASE solutions engineers and customer support teams are able to focus on the
specialised tasks of developing cutting edge media workflow solutions, managing the deployment,
as well as training and on-boarding LCTV users. By building the solution on IBM Cloud, BASE
Media Cloud accelerated the time to launch and enjoyed the ability to quickly alter
configurations based on the client’s needs.
The solution that is now in place enables over 80 global production partners to upload HD
broadcast master files from around the world into one centralised storage hub with BASE Media
Cloud, and have this content automatically checked and prepared for downstream distribution.
Once master files are approved and ready for delivery, the LCTV sales team can easily login to a
branded media portal and simply ‘click to send’ the assets to its broadcast customers at maximum
speed, anywhere in the world, via standard internet connections.
Results story
Centralised processes, greater speed, and cost savings
LCTV can now send approved assets to broadcast customers anywhere in the world via standard
internet connections, all at the click of a button.The LCTV team has been freed upto concentrate
on selling and distributing sports broadcast content, rather than managing a complex technology
stack.
The BASE Media Cloud solution has redefined the way LCTV delivers broadcast media to hundreds of
global buyers, saving the client time and money, while speeding up the process of selling and
delivering broadcast content. By storing the data with IBM, LCTV have access to all their own
material and have better control of archive materials for future monetisation while enjoying
inherent cost-savings by having the data spread across multiple data centres with no added
capital expense.
Furthermore, moving to an online file transfer service powered by Aspera on Cloud has enabled
LCTV to eliminate the need for tape and hard drive shipments around the world by expensive
couriers, further augmenting cost-savings.
From an operational point of view, slow and time-consuming manual tasks have been minimized.
Since switching to a cloud-native service managed by BASE Media Cloud, LCTV has been able to
turn around uploaded master files in a matter of minutes rather than days and deliver them
simultaneously to broadcasters all over the world via one LCTV branded portal.
The seamless integration of Aspera on Cloud with IBM Cloud Object Storage has also resulted in
increased speed, agility and security. Content can quickly be sent to hundreds of broadcasters
simultaneously, while services for new clients can be implemented in minutes with the assurance
that all data is being handled in the most secure way, with encryption in-flight and at-rest.
“Our system is designed with both us and the end
user in mind, enabling our delivery team to very precisely provide programming to our
networks when it is required and in an easy, secure and manageable system”
BASE Media Cloud
Founded in 2015, BASE Media Cloud is an innovative managed cloud services company that provides
integrated cloud storage and multi- cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to a wide range
of high-profile media brands, including Associated Media Publishing, COPA90, Formula E, ITV and
Objective Media Group.
The company is at the forefront of cloud and SaaS services for the media industry, sharing and
delivering hundreds of Terabytes of content per year with thousands of users. Its ready-made
solutions include infrastructure services such as cloud storage, backup, file transfer and
transcoding, as well as purpose-built workflows for media asset management, remote
post-production and video streaming. BASE Media Cloud helps clients reduce costs and improve
workflow efficiencies while removing the challenges of managing complex in-house infrastructure.
From the beginning BASE Media Cloud partnered with IBM Cloud to host and run their cutting-edge
media workflow solutions. The company provides a global file distribution platform as well as
ultra- secure, instant access backup, archive and file sharing solutions for a range of clients
by using IBM Aspera On Cloud, Cloud Object Storage, and Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service
(IaaS).
BASE Media Cloud has been recognised by numerous industry awards since launch, including jointly
winning the 2016 IABM Design & Innovation Awards with IBM Aspera for the deployment of Formula
E’s global media file distribution platform.
BT Sports
High-speed transfers and automation support BT Sport’s new production hub
With IBM® Aspera®, BT Sport can transport large media files at the highest possible speeds
and in single sessions. BT Sport now maximizes bandwidth between the two sites, ensuring
business continuity with near-zero recovery time – which would not have been possible
without Aspera
“It made sense for us to use proven, reliable and
leading technologies such as Aspera FASP and Aspera Orchestrator to ensure the project was
completed on time and workflow productivity was fully optimized”
Business Challenge story
Timeline Television had less than six months to build out the broadcast centre from an empty shell into a 24 hour-a-day operation, including the simultaneous roll-out of a fully automated disaster recovery system. They quickly identified the need for a robust, high-speed transfer platform from a trusted vendor, to power the intense file-based production workflows and meet the project’s aggressive timescale. To fulfill BT Sport’s stringent requirements, the platform needed to support secure high-speed transfer at multi-gigabit speeds, allow fully automated end-to-end workflows including ad-hoc content ingest, review, approval and distribution, and offer reliable, secure data replication of petabytes of media from BT Sport’s main site in London’s iCITY to the disaster recovery and continuity facilities located at the iconic BT Tower.
Transformation
IBM® Aspera® provided a full suite of software including Aspera Orchestrator for complete workflow automation, Aspera faspex for ad- hoc ingest and distribution, Aspera Sync for high-performance replication to the DR site, and Aspera Console for centralized management and control over the entire transfer environment.
Benefits
With Aspera, BT Sport can transport large media files at the highest possible speeds and in single sessions. BT Sport now maximizes bandwidth between the two sites, ensuring business continuity with near-zero recovery time – which would not have been possible without Aspera. Thanks to Aspera’s ability to integrate easily with any third-party solutions, as well as Aspera’s previous experience successfully collaborating with EVS, Timeline Television was able to deliver a tightly integrated solution for BT Sport’s complex workflow in under six months, making this project one of the largest and quickest broadcast installations in the industry. BT Sport maximizes bandwidth, achieving 5 Gbps transfers between their headquarters and the disaster recovery center. Transfers up to 40TB/day of live feeds, rushes and produced content synchronized with DR site. Remotely manages all BT Tower facilities from iCity allowing BT Tower to act as satellite production facility.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Cinedigm
Powering global distribution for leading aggregator of independent digital
content
IBM® Aspera® Connect Server moves large media files, including full-length feature films, at
maximum speed between Cinedigm and partners, and IBM Aspera Point-to-Point Client enables
internal collaboration
“Aspera is the most trusted partner for companies we
deliver content to. It’s an easy and elegant solution. We can deliver content faster and more
efficiently using Aspera. It would be hard to manage without it”
Business Challenge story
As Cinedigm’s business continues to grow, the company is faced with the dilemma of how to retrieve more content from production companies and disseminate more content, and faster, to their distribution partners located across the country and even internationally. Presented with full-length HD films, often uncompressed or in ProRes or other high-res versions, Cinedigm needed a transfer solution that could accommodate very large file sizes while maintaining speed, efficiency and security. Along with receiving content from producers and delivering to distribution partners, Cinedigm also needed a faster transfer mechanism for their internal business needs.
Transformation
Cinedigm adopted the IBM® Aspera® Connect Server to enable content partners to deliver files directly to Cinedigm. Once content is received, it goes through a series of steps including processing, transcoding and ingest, and subsequently Cinedigm uploads the files to ‘workflow watch folders’ where the Aspera Connect Server picks them up for high-speed delivery to distribution channels. Internally, Cinedigm selected Aspera Point-to-Point to transfer feature-length films directly to their Tier 3 mirror SAN storage facilities and to their sister office, enabling collaboration between cross- country team members.
Benefits
With IBM Aspera, Cinedigm doesn’t have to worry about whether their content is going to land in the hands of their distribution partners in a consistent and timely manner; FASP transfers are fast and reliable without requiring a lot of user effort on either end, so Cinedigm administrators and end-users with varying levels of technology proficiency can initiate transfers with ease. Today, Cinedigm delivers media files ranging from 40 to 90 GB in just a few hours or less, a stark improvement over shipping times, which take a minimum of 24 hours. IBM Aspera provides a seamless user experience while offering comprehensive monitoring and control for Cinedigm administrators, who can set transfer priorities and define bandwidth allocation, monitor all incoming and outgoing transfers in real time, and provide access to unlimited users with defined access rights and transfer settings for each.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
CinePostproduction
Speeding ingest of digital cinema packages from studios and delivery to
cinemas
CinePostproduction is a leading postproduction facility in Germany and developer of the
SHARC system for distribution of Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) via its in-house content
delivery network. Through a partnership with Aspera, CinePostproduction integrated IBM®
Aspera® on Demand into their new SHARC system to speed the ingest of DCPs from studios and
the delivery of DCPs directly to cinemas.
“Embedding Aspera on Demand running in the cloud
directly into our SHARC digital distribution platform was an obvious choice and allowed us to
extend the benefits of high-speed digital delivery to over 100 movie theaters using SHARC”
Business Challenge story
Until 2014, physical shipment was the main method used at CinePostproduction to distribute cinema content to their partners in the DACH region. With the transition from 35-millimeter film to digital cinema, film producers and distributors are faced with the question of how to deliver DCP masters electronically. Despite this wide shift to digital, the most common method for distributing DCPs has paradoxically remained the physical shipment of specialized hard disks via courier or satellite delivery. The challenge is further complicated by the large volume and size of the media files: DCPs typically range from 100GB to as large as 400GB. And the data volumes are even greater for its TV and cinema postproduction business area; CinePostproduction needs to send data sets between 150GB to 1.5TB per feature film, which occasionally need to be transferred globally.
Transformation
Thanks to their new system SHARC, which fully integrates IBM® Aspera® on Demand running in the cloud, CinePostproduction can now transfer encrypted, high-resolution Digital Cinema Packages (DCP) with up to 2K or 4K resolutions between the CinePostproduction Content Delivery Network servers in their data center and the participating cinemas in the DACH region.
Benefits
With Aspera On Demand transparently integrated within their SHARC system, CinePostproduction
positions itself as a marketplace leader for cinema content distribution in the DACH region.
While in the past the physical shipment of hard copies could take up to one week, today content
is delivered within hours. And in many cases, standard DSL or cable Internet lines can be used
for secure and reliable transfer of data volumes between 150GB and 1.5TB across Germany, Austria
and Switzerland. The rapid speed at which they can provide their clients with new media content
offers a compelling advantage over other solutions.
The com pute and storage resources needed to distribute DCP change over time depending on the
number of movies and the number of theaters involved in the release. Running Aspera On Demand in
the cloud allows CinePostproduction to scale up transfer capacity as needed to help meet the
variable demand and provide on-time delivery to the cinemas.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera on Demand
Deutsche Welle
Delivering and Receiving Time-critical News Content Anywhere
With IBM® Aspera®, Deutsche Welle can now reach its audience as content is reliably
distributed on time around the globe, without the delays it regularly experienced before
“With Aspera we can reach our global audience quicker
than ever, as content is reliably distributed to and from our partner stations five times faster
than FTP or other alternative solutions. Exchanging large digital data packages up to 1 TB can
now be done with ease.”
Business Challenge story
Each week, DW broadcast to a worldwide audience of over 135 million people using a global satellite network, partner stations and online services. In order to provide its audience with media content at all times, the broadcaster must strive to constantly interact with its vast network of partner stations and postproduction companies to exchange newsworthy programs. Due to the fast-paced nature of media, coordination between postproduction houses and other business partners all over the world is of utmost importance and has become increasingly dynamic and more integrated than ever before. As transfer volumes have grown, DW was compelled to find a solution that enabled it to receive and deliver content, to and from anywhere as quickly as possible while content was fresh, independent of the file size and geographical distance.
Transformation
IBM® Aspera® faspex™ with Cargo provides fast, secure and reliable file transfer of news, features and documentary content. Aspera Console’s web-based management application offers DW complete visibility, real-time monitoring and centralized control of all file transfers, with priority delivery of the most critical video files when necessary.
Benefits
With Aspera, Deutsche Welle can now reach its audience as content is reliably distributed on time around the globe, without the delays it regularly experienced before. Delivery times to and from partners have improved tremendously, with transfer speeds up to five times faster than FTP and other alternative solutions. DW users can easily and quickly exchange large data packages that are as big as 1 TB.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
SES Platform Services
Fast and reliable transfers for playout services and delivery to VOD platforms
worldwide
SES Platform Services operates one of Europe’s most modern broadcasting centers. To help
meet increasing demand for fast and reliable playout services to broadcast networks and to
speed the delivery of content to Video On Demand (VOD) platforms worldwide, SES Platform
Services selected Aspera's patented FASP® high-speed transfer technology. Aspera enables
high-performance uploads of digital content to the SES facility and faster, more efficient
deliveries to VOD platforms located around the world.
“Not only does Aspera make life easy for our customers,
but it also simplifies the process for us because now we have a single entry point for files
entering our facility”
Business Challenge story
As a service provider, SES Platform Services has to tailor the delivery workflow to suit the needs of different customers and their content providers. Thus they were looking for an advanced solution that would enable tight integration into their existing master system and offer the flexibility to accommodate different workflow steps and diverse client requirements. SES Platform Services needed a fast, reliable transfer mechanism to speed up video deliveries to VOD platforms worldwide and provide ease-of-use and efficiency for customer uploads to their media management platform.
Transformation
IBM® Aspera® Connect Server speeds ingest and delivery of large video files, while IBM® Aspera® Orchestrator complements their existing in-house workflow engine with automated file delivery into SES’ facilities, enabling SES to combine all internal and external file transfers in one application that is tightly integrated within SES’ diverse environment with evolving requirements.
Benefits
Using Aspera, SES is able to receive several hundred files, amounting to three terabytes of data, each day from their customers. Additionally, Aspera completes approximately 100 outgoing file transfers to VOD platforms in the US, Germany and around the world. As a core part of their IT infrastructure, Aspera has remained a crucial and reliable system for managing complex workflows, receiving content from customers and delivering files to VOD platforms at maximum speed.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Components
- Aspera
Storyline Studios
Producing compelling TV shows faster with high-speed transfers for high-resolution
video
The rise of streaming video services is changing the media distribution landscape. To
accelerate the production process and deliver shows to clients faster, Storyline Studios
uses industry-leading IBM® Aspera® file transfer solutions to send raw footage via the
internet from shooting locations to its post-production teams after each day of filming.
Business Challenge
As the popularity of streaming services continues to grow, TV broadcasters are under constant pressure to deliver new content. How could Storyline Studios create shows for its clients faster?
Transformation
Storyline Studios deployed IBM Aspera Faspex, enabling it to send large raw footage over standard wide area networks quickly and reliably and start the editing process on the same day.
Results
Boosts content
by delivering footage many times faster in 2 hours via the internet
Reduces costs
by enabling Storyline Studios to cut production times from months to weeks
Enhances security
with enterprise-grade encryption, helping Storyline Studios keep data safe
Business challenge story
From the set to the screen
Today, consumers have the freedom to stream thousands of shows almost anywhere and anytime they
choose. For TV broadcasters around the world, the challenge is to deliver compelling new content
to keep viewers engaged.
This is particularly important in Norway, where the prevalence of mobile devices and streaming
media services are among the highest in Europe. Storyline Studios, a leading supplier of film
equipment, creatives and technical infrastructure to some of Europe’s largest production
companies, wanted to help its clients to create shows faster.
Torulf Henriksen, CTO at Storyline Studios, explains: “Many of the shows we produce are shot on
location in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. In most cases, we would store the highest-quality
raw video footage on hard drives at the shooting location, and then physically ship it back to
our post-production facilities for editing at the end of the shoot. During the weeks in between,
we relied on file-transfer protocol [FTP] services to send lower-quality daily and editorial
files back to our production teams for review.”
As demand for shorter production cycles grew, Storyline Studios realized it needed to enable its
teams to start editing raw footage faster.
“One of our clients wanted to create a drama series and release teaser clips online a week
before each new episode aired,” continued Henriksen. “To meet these tight deadlines, we didn’t
have the luxury of waiting weeks to ship raw footage back for editing—we needed to start working
on it almost as soon as it was shot. While FTP had worked reasonably well to send lower-quality
video, we knew the approach wouldn’t scale effectively to send large amounts of raw footage.”
“With IBM Aspera, we can help our clients meet their
production deadlines in a secure and cost-effective way.”
Transformation story
Maximizing transfer speeds
To solve the challenge, Storyline Studios worked with IBM Silver Business Partner Danmon Group to
implement IBM Aspera Faspex and IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server.
Henriksen continues: “We chose to deploy IBM Aspera Faspex as our primary file transfer solution
not only because it provides high-speed file transfers that fully utilize all available
bandwidth with robust, end-to-end security, but also because many of the leading players in our
industry use Aspera solutions. By adopting Aspera, we knew that we would make it easier for our
clients to share their files with many other production companies already utilizing the
technology.”
Storyline Studios initially deployed IBM Aspera Faspex on Demand, the innovative cloud-based
Faspex solution designed to transcend the bandwidth limitations of traditional FTP data
transfers with proprietary FASP® and Direct-to-Cloud transfer technologies.
“Shortly after we made the decision to move forward with IBM Aspera, one of our clients asked us
to encrypt and send a package of video files,” recalls Henriksen. “In the past, we would have
needed to encrypt the files in a ZIP archive and then send the file via FTP. However, this would
have been a time-consuming process, and our client was working to a tight deadline.
“Because our IBM Aspera environment was still in the deployment phase, the Danmon Group team
helped us use IBM Aspera Faspex on Demand to send the files rapidly and securely—allowing us to
deliver the footage to our client in time, quickly and easily. Working with Danmon Group has
been an excellent experience, and the team went on to help us deploy the on-premises solution in
under a month.”
Results story
Delivering more video content in much shorter timeframes
Storyline Studios is now working with a leading Norwegian production company to create a
brand-new TV drama that will be broadcast on national television and streamed online. This
production demands a rapid turnaround in the production process, with creatives at Storyline
Studios needing to turn raw footage into high-quality episodes in weeks, not months.
Torulf says: “Previously, we would have had to wait until all filming has been completed to ship
raw files back to our post-production teams. Thanks to IBM Aspera, we can send raw footage from
set to our facilities in Oslo in under two hours—enabling us to start the editing process
immediately and our clients to deliver shows to broadcasters faster.”
Today, Storyline Studios is using IBM Aspera Faspex to support a wide range of file transfer use
cases. As well as empowering its clients to send raw footage from remote locations to
post-production on the same day it is shot, the company can transfer edited footage such as
visual effects plates between different production teams faster. And with IBM Aspera Faspex
providing comprehensive enterprise-grade security, Storyline Studios now has greater control
over its data.
“Thanks to native encryption in IBM Aspera, it is much easier and faster for us to send files to
our clients securely,” explains Henriksen. “On top of this, we have gained greater visibility
into what data is being sent, who is sending it and where it is being sent. We can also set
granular user access rights for our clients, which reduces the risk of files being removed
accidentally or copied without permission.”
Henriksen concludes: “Without a doubt, IBM Aspera is a scalable solution that will support our
needs in the long term. We currently have a license that we can quickly scale as our
requirements evolve. With IBM Aspera, we can help our clients meet their production deadlines in
a secure and cost-effective way.”
Storyline Studios
Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Storyline Studios is the country’s leading supplier of film equipment, creatives and technical infrastructure. The company provides a range of production and post-production services, including cameras, lights, studios, office space and sound and picture editing.
Solution Components
- Aspera
WDRmg
Powering complex digital media workflows
WDR mediagroup (mg) has deployed a complete suite of high-speed transfer and automation
solutions from IBM® Aspera® to streamline complex workflows of large and wildly diverse
volumes of digital media assets. By speeding its workflow and scaling its capacity, WDRmg
can now process and upload more video content than ever to video streaming platforms around
the world.
“With Aspera, we can now manage and control all
processes centrally and automatically, resulting in much greater efficiencies. Files are now
picked up from the archive and automatically transcoded into the requested format without delay.
Thanks to the Aspera solution, we are able to seamlessly supply content to video-on-demand
platforms worldwide”
Business Challenge story
As consumers continue to stream media at a record pace, content distributors are looking to media service providers like WDRmg to help them capture revenue from old and new content by preparing it for streaming services. WDRmg, one of the largest integrated media service providers in Germany, needed an efficient way to manage its complex workflows for processing content from multiple file formats for content digitizing, archiving and delivery, as well as marketing and advertising services. WDRmg sought a high-performance transfer and automation solution that could swiftly manage high-volume processing workflows while maintaining a high level of security, reliability, and ease of use.
Transformation
WDRmg selected Aspera’s web-based automation platform, IBM® Aspera® Orchestrator, to streamline complex workflows and help ensure accuracy of each processing step throughout the pipeline. By placing Aspera Orchestrator at the center of its workflow management system, WDRmg was able to integrate an array of existing subsystems with highly efficient, predictable file processing and delivery pipelines to give it complete control and transparency of the process. The addition of Aspera faspex provides WDRmg users with an intuitive, high-performance solution to collaborate, share and deliver large files company wide. Additionally, Aspera Console offers full transparency and accountability along the entire process chain with real-time notification, logging and reporting capabilities.
Benefits
WDRmg can process and upload approximately 80 percent more video content to streaming platforms WDRmg reaches a wider audience by expanding its capacity to supply content to 15 leading video-on-demand platforms.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)
Predictable high-speed data transmission and delivery under extreme
conditions
SBS deployed a broad suite of IBM® Aspera® products to automate the ingest, management and
synchronization of content across multiple storage systems located in disparate locations
“Aspera was the only vendor that could meet all of our
requirements for file exchange and delivery, detailed system management and enterprise-wide data
synchronization”
Business Challenge story
Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) was founded on the belief that all Australians, regardless of geography, age, cultural background or language skills, should have access to high-quality, independent, culturally-relevant Australian media. Working under extreme conditions including disaster situations and war zones, field reporters need highly predictable and reliable data transmission and delivery, regardless of location or connectivity. The whole system also requires centralized management and synchronization among servers around the world.
Transformation
SBS deployed a broad suite of IBM® Aspera® products to automate the ingest, management and synchronization of content across multiple storage systems located in disparate locations including IBM Aspera faspex for global collaborative file exchange and distribution, IBM Aspera Console to centrally manage the entire infrastructure including all IBM Aspera transfers from any location, and IBM Aspera Sync, a high-speed, multi-directional synchronization software, was selected to complete the automated file transport system that bridges the gap between disparate storage solutions across the SBS network.
Benefits
The Aspera solution enables maximum speed data transfer and highly efficient delivery and sharing of digital assets facility-wide through several different interfaces, yet does not hamper editors and content creators by requiring multiple logins. Bridging networks and storage platforms, the Aspera solution makes sure that SBS’ mission-critical data can be transferred to their disaster recovery facility at high speed with built-in security and rock-solid integrity.
Solution Category
- IBM Cloud
Solution Comoponents
- Aspera
