SCIENCE

BlueArc and Aspera have announced a new technology alliance to provide breakthrough transport and storage solutions that overcome the challenges of quickly moving large files and data sets over wide area networks (WANs).

Aspera's patented fasp transport technology has been successfully tested and validated in BlueArc's labs. Designed to eliminate the fundamental bottlenecks of conventional, TCP-based protocols--such as FTP or HTTP--fasp guarantees maximum transfer speed regardless of distance and network conditions, while providing extraordinary policy-based control over bandwidth and uncompromising data security and reliability. As a result, Aspera software exceeds the WAN transfer performance and scalability limits of traditional CIFS and NFS protocols in network-attached storage environments.

The ability for Aspera software to drive WAN file transfers at multi-Gbps speeds at global distances has uncovered new bottlenecks in the "last foot" of this data movement, the short path between the computer endpoint transferring the files to the storage appliance. The engineering teams at BlueArc and Aspera have been collaborating very closely to fully optimize end-to-end WAN transfers and deliver ultra high-speed-capable transport and storage solutions. With BlueArc's industry-leading performance and suite of optimization tools for data management, customers leveraging an Aspera client/server software solution on the BlueArc Mercury and Titan storage systems can easily manage large WAN file transfers with unprecedented performance.

"Workflows in digital media and asset management for Fortune 500 corporations and organizations in the entertainment, federal government and life sciences industries all need the ability to quickly process and edit large file data without storage bottlenecks, and transport those files, sometimes across the world, without being affected by packet loss and network delays," said Mike Gustafson, president and CEO, BlueArc. "The unprecedented performance results of the combined BlueArc-Aspera solution demonstrate the benefits that customers can achieve from this important new partnership."

"Our position as a world-leader in the visual effects industry is a result of the talented artists that we have and the cutting-edge technologies that Cinesite invests in to support them," said Antony Hunt, managing director of Cinesite. "Our combined use of Aspera software for global file transfers and BlueArc high-performance storage enables our artists to meet the most ambitious production deadlines and maintain visual creativity."

"By offering breakthrough transport and storage solutions with BlueArc, we can enable companies to move massive volumes of data over private WANs and the public Internet at several Gigabits per second," said Michelle Munson, Aspera president and CEO. "We're looking to provide our mutual customers with game-changing technologies that allow them to move terabytes of data across continents in a matter of minutes rather than days."

Lab testing of the joint solution produced groundbreaking transfer performance results, reaching consistent, end-to-end throughputs of up to 6.1 Gbps under varying, real-world WAN conditions. At such speeds, one terabyte of data can be moved across continents in about 20 minutes. More information on the test environment and comprehensive results can be found here.

BlueArc and Aspera are both sponsoring the inaugural Annex Pro Expo 2011 at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Dec. 8, 2010, where experts from both companies will be on-hand to provide more details on the new joint solutions.