The News: At NAB 2023 held in Vegas a few weeks ago, Hammerspace introduced the company’s data orchestration solution. Read the full announcement from Hammerspace here.
Hammerspace Introduces Data Orchestration Solution at NAB 2023
Analyst Take: At NAB 2023 held in Vegas in mid-April, Hammerspace introduced a data orchestration solution the company describes as helping to empower remote creative teams and accelerate workflows.
Hammerspace describes their solution as Data Orchestration – managing and controlling storage of files across diverse environments. For the Media and Entertainment market, addressing the diverse environment where more videos are worked on in many different locations by different people is an on-target solution. Policy driven orchestration goes beyond just storing and accessing files, it provides the intelligent controls for managing where data resides based on performance and cost demands.
A parallel global file system is how Hammerspace describes their underlying system for data orchestration. As a software-based system, able to utilize other vendor NAS and server systems, Hammerspace addresses the global storage needs across on-premises, cloud, and remote (local) access.
How Hammerspace Attacks the Challenges of Media & Entertainment File Management
Data, and in the case of M&E, video files, are increasingly dispersed on different storage systems and different environments including on multiple clouds. Hammerspace is attacking the problem by managing across the environments with what is termed data orchestration.
I think Hammerspace understands the problem and have an approach that can change the way files are managed, providing value to customers. It is always difficult to explain solutions that are expansive — people tend to compare against what they are familiar with and have used. Once the data orchestration is understood, customers will see the value.
This will be a great fit for the M&E environment, given not only the diverse access to video files, but the need to control access and security. The flexibility built into Hammerspace will be well suited to continuing changes in workflows that I am seeing in Media & Entertainment.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Randy draws from over 35 years of experience in helping storage companies design and develop products. As a partner at Evaluator Group and now The Futurum Group, he spends much of his time advising IT end-user clients on architectures and acquisitions.
Previously, Randy was Vice President of Storage and Planning at Sun Microsystems. He also developed disk and tape systems for the mainframe attachment at IBM, StorageTek, and two startup companies. Randy also designed disk systems at Fujitsu and Tandem Computers.
Prior to joining The Futurum Group, Randy served as the CTO for ProStor, where he brought products to market addressing a long-term archive for Information Technology and the Healthcare and Media/Entertainment markets.
He has also written numerous industry articles and papers as an educator and presenter, and he is the author of two books: Planning a Storage Strategy and Information Archiving – Economics and Compliance. The latter is the first book of its kind to explore information archiving in depth. Randy regularly teaches classes on Information Management technologies in the U.S. and Europe.
