The M&E industry requires data to be continuously visible and available combined with the minimized risk of data loss. In addition, all upgrades, expansions and maintenance must be non-disruptive and reliable. Finally, this technology must be secure, scalable and support enterprise growth. Previously, cloud solutions only addressed part of these demands.

While high bandwidth cloud storage was often too costly for many production needs, a new, more effective and lower-cost solution is now available.

Developed from a longstanding NetApp partnership, ASE has built a unique cloud offering, ASE Cloud. Architected to provide a next-to-cloud solution, it offers flexibility for customer’s data to reside outside of traditional cloud providers. This provides the benefit of seamless access and efficiency gains across all major cloud providers. Powered by ASE’s FLUID network, the solution enables a burst tolerant, high performance and geographically dispersed fabric for data management.

By combining ASE Cloud storage and powering it with the NetApp StorageGRID Webscale and NetApp Private Storage as a service (NPSaaS), the result is efficient object-based storage. The solution provides the required management and control of data in a public cloud, but without data egress fees.

Behind the solution

The production of content frequently requires that petabytes of HD and 4K imagery be transferred globally. The ASE Cloud, when supported by NetApp StorageGRID Webscale, offers easy access to the data from anywhere in the world. NPSaaS (NetApp Private Storage As A Service) within the ASE Cloud offers cloud connectivity for high volume applications and simplifies cross-cloud migration. Combined, the ASE Cloud and integrated NetApp StorageGRID Webscale and NPSaaS solution, can  be customized to a company’s needs providing maximum control, cost-savings, flexibility and security.

The rapid pace of change in IT technology means facilities must protect their ability to upgrade and migrate data sets – even across clouds. Traditionally, this would be costly, but the NPSaaS platform allows data to be stored and migrated between cloud providers by keeping content and control securely tied to the cloud. Users have the freedom to utilize AWS (Amazon Web Services) one day and Microsoft Azure cloud storage the next. One need not be locked into a single, long-term, vendor

Benefits include

Some legacy storage systems and architecture may have structural restrictions. However, ASE Cloud resolves that issue by giving customers the data mobility and scalability they require. The platform enables an acceleration of time-to-market by up to 75 percent, a reduction of IT data management costs by up to 66 percent and automation and reduction of resource provisioning from weeks to minutes.

The integrated NPSaaS solution incurs no network traffic charges and the performance-tiered storage is a pay-as-you-grow subscription. Meanwhile, the NetApp StorageGRID Webscale integration offers infinitely scalable storage. Data can be ingested where it is created and later moved to another off-site production location. This combination enables rapid startup and expansion as opportunities arise. 

The M&E industry often curates content based on its respective audience’s activities and interests. This typically demands life-like animation, vivid colors and dazzling visual effects. The goal is to create an immersive entertaining environment. Such content requires massive processing power and a constant flow of data moving from producer to consumer and back.

By supporting such a two-way workflow, the content owner gains access to a wide breadth of cloud production tools while also gaining portability, data management and scalability and avoiding single-vendor lock-in. For those companies wanting customization ASE Cloud provides an all one technology solution stack that can help manage growth, increase security and harness cloud innovations.