OIL & GAS

Signaling a new age for professional sports, NBA Entertainment today announced it has contracted to engage Silicon Graphics as a vendor partner with plans to use some of the world’s most powerful computing technologies to create the No. 1 high-tech powerhouse in the world of sports. As a first step, NBA Entertainment has purchased an SGI storage solution capable of storing the equivalent of nearly half the contents of the Library of Congress, with plans to expand to 50 trillion bytes of information in the future. When it’s installed at NBA Entertainment headquarters in Secaucus, NJ, the data warehouse will allow NBA broadcast engineers to catalog and store all the action from every NBA game as it occurs. As a first step, NBA Entertainment has purchased an SGI storage solution capable of storing the equivalent of nearly half the contents of the Library of Congress, with plans to expand to 50 trillion bytes of information in the future. When it’s installed at NBA Entertainment headquarters in Secaucus, NJ, the data warehouse will allow NBA broadcast engineers to catalog and store all the action from every NBA game as it occurs. By leveraging SGI® Professional Services to integrate the complex workflow, NBA Entertainment’s broadcast production facility – among the most sophisticated in sports – will now be able to instantly capture every play, categorize it, and store it for fast and easy retrieval. Those capabilities are essential, as NBA Entertainment’s digital facility is a quick turn around production and distribution point for digital media globally every night the NBA is in action. NBA Entertainment produces NBA TV, video packages for NBA.com, VOD packages for cable partners, short packages for cell phone distribution, and customized video for on-line viewing on Web sites worldwide. NBA Entertainment will also index and serve video to the NBA Basketball Operations Group, which oversees the rules and referees of the game. With basketball enjoying its spot as the world’s most popular sport after soccer, NBA Entertainment sends game broadcasts, clips and other NBA content to 214 countries worldwide. And the demand for all things NBA continues to grow. “The action that takes place on the basketball court produces enormous amounts of desirable content that then can be provided to millions of fans throughout North America and the world,” said Steve Hellmuth, senior vice president of technology, NBA Entertainment. “As command central for all NBA broadcasts, our production facility literally captures everything that happens in each game – with sometimes a dozen games going at once. SGI’s storage solution helps us improve our ability to work with that content in the window in which it is more valuable, immediately following the game, and puts the games in a secure archive for preservation and future programming. “What makes this possible is that computer-based digital storage is not only enormously more efficient than video tape, it is also now less costly – and with Moore’s Law remaining in effect, a great cost saver in the future as we are dedicated, comprehensive archivists of the NBA’s video and film,” continued Hellmuth. As part of its initiative to push the use of technology in sports broadcasting more than ever before, NBA Entertainment is also collaborating with SGI and its partners on other potential uses of its high-performance technology. These might include immersive, interactive displays that allow arena sponsors or box owners to experience a game underway at a new arena even before it is built. Other potential advancements include 3D trajectory technology that allows fans to experience a jump shot from their favorite player’s point of view. Another futuristic opportunity includes sophisticated pattern-recognition technology that enables overhead cameras to track the on-court movements of every player, and then render their actions in 3D so coaches can interactively study offense and defense moves from any angle. Such immersive environments would be enhanced by high-resolution, 150-degree display technology from Barco Projection Systems, Inc. “NBA Entertainment is a visionary force in sports, with a prescient awareness of how technology can transform the fan experience, and even coaching and arena development,” said Greg Estes, vice president of corporate marketing, SGI. “We’re excited to help NBA Entertainment craft a unique, long-term strategy for harnessing technology that literally could change the face of professional sports.” NBA Entertainment’s new SGI InfiniteStorage NAS 2000 solution provides universal data access and flexible, scalable and secure high-performance network-attached storage (NAS). The solution also incorporates the StorageTek SL8500 tape library. As expected growth continues, the InfiniteStorage solution from SGI can effortlessly and cost-effectively expand to increase network bandwidth, adding hundreds of terabytes of data. The SGI NAS solution is also capable of growing into a full storage area network (SAN) with SGI InfiniteStorage Shared Filesystem CXFS, which combines the flexibility and ease of use of NAS with the power and speed of SAN architecture, with no data conversion necessary.