The News: The National Association of Broadcast (NAB) honored multiple data infrastructure companies at its 101st NAB Show conference attended by an estimated 61,000 from around the world. Read the full list of awards winners on the NAB website.
NAB 2024: Of Course it is a Data Infrastructure Show!
Analyst Take: The NAB Show has always been a big data storage show. In fact, it is a sight to behold not only the latest technology innovations that are enabling global file sharing and AI design work but also one of the remaining domains of tape technology. The show has been often the venue for release of the new archiving and data management tools along with tech for large data repositories with file and object. Data management has often been ignored in enterprise, but when it comes to the Media and Entertainment (M&E) market, it is a core function of their data systems.
What is also unique for the M&E market is how the technology, such as data storage, is tied to singular movie or show development. It is also highly reliant on data management both for immediate access (think about ESPN grabbing a clip for commentary), reuse (another flashback picture of Arnold Swarznegger for the latest Terminator movie), or long term (exactly who is in charge of safekeeping Gone with the Wind). Repositories are big, especially with the animation and digitization of movies.
Thus, it is no surprise that awards for data infrastructure are given in the categories of Cloud Computing and Storage, Hardware, and Infrastructure and Security. The following provides a quick rundown of the Products of the Year.
Cloud Computing and Storage
Winner: Hammerspace Hyperscale NAS. Hammerspace has had considerable success in this market prior to its release of Hyperscale NAS. This new offering is a higher performance based system that will either use the customer’s already present NAS system or Hammerspace’s NAS. We covered this in a previous post, but basically, Hammerspace is exploiting functions within Linux to bring the speed of a parallel file system without the difficulties of parallel file systems.
Winner: LucidLink Storage Collaboration Platform. This global file system (GFS) enables collaboration for creative teams. Given that these teams are often working around the world, this solution speeds work such as editing, animation, and design. We have been tracking LucidLink in our GFS coverage.
Winner: Quantum ActiveScale Z200 All-Flash Object Storage. Object has been used by M&E for a long time; one of the first adopters of the technology. Most installations have been for content repositories. We now see the market bringing all flash offerings as a way to deliver more performance and faster access. Quantum is a longstanding technology leader in the M&E market, known well for StoreNext data management and tape technologies. This award adds another NAB Show award to their cadre.
Winner: OpenDrives Atlas. No they are not an HDD provider (though the company name may cause you to pause). This ZFS platform has lots of additional capabilities that target M&E users. Located in the heart of Los Angeles, OpenDrives has built up capabilities tailored to this market.
Hardware
Winner: Seagate Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform. This HAMR drive was launched with much fanfare in January 2024. This technology is a breakthrough for hard drives, bringing capacity to 30 TB and with much run room for expansion. Mitch Lewis provides more details on the technology.
IT Networking Infrastructure and Security
Winner: Resilio Active Everywhere Platform. This solution is brought to you by the creators of BitTorrent. Resilio is using P2P technology to synchronize files; the solution can layer over existing platforms and ease the pain of working with unreliable networks. This is version 4.0 of Resilio Connect, thus not new, but adding more functionality with more complex file data automation operations and separating the data from compute.
Congratulations to the winners.
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.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
How NAB Provides Insight into Information Storage
Technical Insight: File Storage Selection – NAS vs Global File Systems
Hammerspace Unveils Hyperscale NAS Addressing the AI/HPC Workloads
Author Information
Now retired, Camberley brought over 25 years of executive experience leading sales and marketing teams at Fortune 500 firms. Before joining The Futurum Group, she led the Evaluator Group, an information technology analyst firm as Managing Director.
Her career spanned all elements of sales and marketing including a 360-degree view of addressing challenges and delivering solutions was achieved from crossing the boundary of sales and channel engagement with large enterprise vendors and her own 100-person IT services firm.
Camberley provided Global 250 startups with go-to-market strategies, creating a new market category “MAID” as Vice President of Marketing at COPAN and led a worldwide marketing team including channels as a VP at VERITAS. At GE Access, a $2B distribution company, she served as VP of a new division and succeeded in growing the company from $14 to $500 million and built a successful 100-person IT services firm. Camberley began her career at IBM in sales and management.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business from California State University – Long Beach and executive certificates from Wellesley and Wharton School of Business.
