ACADEMIA

CloudSigma announced the launch of its Media Services Ecosystem, the first collaborative public cloud environment designed exclusively for media industry service providers and production companies. CloudSigma's Media Services Ecosystem provides high performance compute, storage and data transfer capabilities for media professionals working on technically advanced productions, including three dimensional renderings, encoding and high quality streaming distribution.

Today's media companies constantly collaborate with partners all over the world on content-heavy productions that require massive amounts of compute resources. These businesses send and receive incredibly large, high resolution files on a daily basis, leading to production-stalling data transfer latencies and excess costs. Imagine flying the latest Blockbuster hit back and forth from LA to London every week -- that not only poses a logistical nightmare, but also a cost-prohibitive security risk. CloudSigma's Media Services Ecosystem provides a single, dynamic public cloud where media professionals can exchange project components instantaneously and cost effectively.

"In order to give our customers seamless collaboration across their production and post-production workflows, MediaCloud combines powerful storage resources with accelerated file uploads and downloads anywhere in the world," said Chuck Stormon, CEO of Attend, a Media Services Ecosystem participant. "The magic of CloudSigma's Media Services Ecosystem is that once the data is in the cloud, a wide array of encoding, transcoding, rendering, visual effects, asset management, and other functions have access to advanced cloud infrastructure, which is readily available. When all the key functions in a media project are positioned in one public cloud together, all collaborators can access their data from where they are, and processing can be performed efficiently without worrying about distances or time. The Media Services Ecosystem becomes a functional, magnetic hub for creative forces."

Fereidoon Khosravi, SVP of Business Development for Media Services Ecosystem partner Venera Technologies, also commented, "Our Pulsar automated content verification software requires the fastest possible data transfers for our customers, including broadcast, post-production and media archiving companies. CloudSigma's Media Services Ecosystem allows our customers to use Pulsar to perform QC on their media files without traditional latency associated with the transfer of these typically large files, allowing quicker turn around and avoiding productivity loss. CloudSigma's IaaS environment is perfect for service providers like us that are working with highly sophisticated media productions on tight deadlines. It proves the real value of the cloud for our industry."

The Media Services Ecosystem is a venue for next generation media production, in which resources are diverted towards content optimization, rather than wasted on expensive and time consuming data transfers. Data transfer costs can be extremely overwhelming for media companies looking to move their operations to a cloud environment. However, CloudSigma's Media Services Ecosystem provides highly affordable data portability, with free, unlimited incoming data transfers and a competitive, flat fee of 5 cents per gigabyte for outgoing data delivered over multiple independent carrier 10GigE lines. Media companies can migrate hundreds of terabytes or petabytes into CloudSigma's environment at no cost and then move data among other media services providers within the cloud for free. This open environment results in a highly-integrated network where all participants can achieve the highest levels of productivity.

"We are successfully bringing media companies together under one roof at Switch's SuperNAP facility in Las Vegas to simplify and advance the media production process," said Robert Jenkins, CloudSigma CTO. "Post-production shops, rendering service providers, distribution companies and all the other involved parties rely on each other to exchange data promptly, with little room for error. In a public cloud environment, media professionals aren't limited by resource requirements, and they can pursue their work more efficiently. Our Media Services Ecosystem represents a major leap forward in utilizing cloud computing to eradicate many of the boundaries that have held media professionals back from their full creative potential."

Participating members of CloudSigma's Media Services Ecosystem gain access to the most advanced public cloud on the market, with pay-as-you-go pricing, full scalability, 10GigE networking, cutting edge solid state drive (SSD) storage and a completely open software platform. CloudSigma customers have the flexibility to migrate to the cloud using the software and operating systems of their choice, with full control over their data and no risk of vendor lock-in. These components make collaboration among Media Ecosystem members completely seamless, allowing them to store, transfer and edit the essential pieces of a media project regardless of any geographic, resource or cost barriers.