GAMING

LOS ANGELES, CA -- DataDirect Networks, the leading provider of the world's highest performance storage networking appliances, announces the availability of "Digital Media Delivery: Content on Demand," a new engineering-focused, "hands on" implementation guide that details how broadcasters and other content creation and distribution professionals can gain increased productivity and lower operating costs by using Silicon Storage Appliances to create centralized, flexible and easy-to-scale IT storage network infrastructures. DataDirect's Silicon Storage Appliances allow broadcasters and digital professionals to easily deploy a storage area network that offers workflow efficiencies and ease of management benefits to applications that include VOD (video on demand), real-time video and videoconferencing. Using a Silicon Storage Appliance-based digital storage network also enables rapid, cost-effective production and delivery, concurrent access to consolidated content, file sharing across the production process for more efficient workflow, quick and non-intrusive storage reallocation, and the ability to enable tape-less, real-time environments for VOD and content distribution systems. Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows creative professionals to increase their application's productivity, providing data at least three times faster than existing Storage Area Networking (SAN) solutions and ten times faster than Network Attached Storage (NAS) technology. The acceleration of data to applications and users -- simply and easily -- allows DataDirect Networks' customers to consolidate their storage; the Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows management of up to hundreds of Terabytes by a single system administrator, providing 10x lower Total Cost of Ownership than alternative solutions. In the new implementation guide (available at www.datadirectnet.com/solutions/rich_content.html), DataDirect discusses how to build appliance-based SANs, covering topics including storage consolidation, architecting flexible, scalable network topologies, and automating information management. Designed for the IT professional tasked with solving day-to-day challenges in broadcasting and digital media, this white paper answers the questions - why and how - involved in building storage networks. "With today's business imperative of doing more for less, digital professionals are seeking more than the technology of past years -- they require solutions that allow increased productivity and workflow efficiencies, along with storage cost reductions in their content delivery infrastructures," Brad Winett, vice president, business development, DataDirect Networks, said. "Competitive advantages that Silicon Storage Appliances bring over other storage technologies, including increased efficiency, lower operating costs and the highest levels of QoS, are needed catalysts to enable digital broadcast and professional facilities, and our new white paper can help answer IT professionals' questions in designing and building these enabling storage infrastructures." DataDirect Networks has created highly scalable, simple-to-deploy and easy-to-manage Silicon Storage Appliances to accelerate application performance, simplify information management, and lower operating costs. Using a Silicon Storage Appliance-based infrastructure to create the storage area network allows broadcasting professionals to overcome the many limitations of first generation storage networks, with the plug and play appliance bringing application productivity through acceleration, cost-effective scalability and simplicity with high QoS. Silicon Storage Appliances bring parallelism and superior virtualization benefits to content creators and provides unmatched advantages to the production environment. For broadcasters and creative professionals needing high stream count, rock solid audio and video streams, storage and host scalability, and simplified management, DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliance technology sets new standards in application acceleration and plug and play simplicity. DataDirect's enterprise-class S2A 6000 Silicon Storage Appliance directly supports up to 512 workstations and 180 Terabytes of storage, simultaneously supporting a multitude of ingest, NLE, CG, playout and browse stations. With each appliance's ability to supply over 6000 hours of 50Mbit/sec MPEG2@ML content to 90 concurrent streams, and the ability to support 1000's of concurrent broadband streams, the Silicon Storage Appliance brings performance and scalability benefits to broadcasting and production environments. DataDirect's "format independence" guarantees scaling of capacity and streams from highly-compressed broadband all the way to HD and beyond. The S2A 3000 Silicon Storage Appliance, based on DataDirect's proven S2A 6000 appliance technology, brings a simple to deploy, easy to manage and affordable storage network appliance that allows departments and workgroups to achieve application performance gains, cost-effective scalability and simplified management. Each S2A 3000 Silicon Storage Appliance supplies an aggregate bandwidth up to 800 megabytes per second to Linux, Unix, Windows NT/2000, Sun, AIX, HP-UX and SGI workgroups. The S2A 3000 can easily manage storage network environments ranging in capacity from 500GB to 14 Terabytes. Customers using DataDirect's Silicon Storage Appliances include the E! Networks, Time Warner Cable, RTL Television, British Broadcasting Company, CineGroupe, Star TV, Loudeye, NASA, NCSA, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, National Century Financial Enterprises, Sandia National Laboratories, CardioNow, and Sonic Foundry, among others. DataDirect SAN partnerships include industry leaders VERITAS Software, Seagate, Emulex, and QLogic, among others.