NAB: Wasabi Launches Media Innovation Cloud Alliance to Deliver Processing Price/Performance for M&A

Wasabi Technologies, Inc., a cloud storage company, announces the Media Innovation Cloud Alliance, a coalition of media technology companies integrating across multiple clouds to deliver a price/performance ratio superior to first-generation cloud providers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

The mission of alliance partners is to enable media companies to affordably leverage independent, next-gen cloud services as an alternative to monolithic first-generation cloud stacks. Services offered by the alliance span the media lifecycle from content transfer and ingest, to editing and transformation, to playback and delivery, through archiving and library management.

Founding Media Innovation Cloud Alliance partners include: 

• Acembly, Inc. (multi-cloud management)
• Archiware GmbH (backup and archive)
• Cinnafilm, Inc. (transcoding and image processing),
• Cloudfirst.io (archive migration and storage orchestration)
• FileCatalyst, Inc. (file acceleration)
• Integrated Media Technologies, Inc. (systems integration)
• Levels Beyond, Inc. (media production orchestration)
• Masstech Innovations, Inc. (content archive & storage management)
• Marquis Broadcast Ltd (DR, backup, archive, in-cloud project versioning),
• Packet (compute)
• Primestream Corporation (content production and workflow automation)
• Sohonet Group Limited (media network)
• Versity Software, Inc. (large archive software)
• Wasabi Technologies, Inc. (cloud storage)
• XenData, Inc. (active archive)

Media Innovation Cloud Alliance provides:

• Improved cost/performance compared to traditional cloud services or on-premises solutions
• The flexibility to use cloud services without financial penalties, rather than force media companies to commit to a single cloud provider
• Infinite storage with the performance to serve any need from production work-in-progress to long-term media archiving
• Reduced or eliminated data transfer fees (egress fees) for mutual customers of members

A foundational component of the Media Innovation Cloud Alliance is Wasabi, the cloud object storage service. Its hot cloud storage performs up to 6x faster than AWS S3, providing rapid access to production work-in-progress and archived content. Designed for exabyte-scale and data durability, Wasabi also features a single tier with no charge for data egress or API requests. Media companies can move their media in and out of the company to take advantage of the best cloud media processing services for any given project.

“Since our founding, Wasabi has been pushing the notion of Cloud 2.0, where workloads can move across multiple clouds without friction or added expense in order to deliver the best finished product at the lowest possible price,” says Whit Jackson, Wasabi’s VP of media and entertainment. “We are delighted to be working with this group of media technology and business innovators who are also committed to enabling the potential of cloud media processing.“

“As an industry, media and entertainment operates with tight profit margins and extreme deadlines,” says Mark Turner, media and entertainment strategist, and former VP of strategy, Technicolor. “Companies are enthusiastic about using best-of-breed cloud services that fit their specific needs, have no financial penalties, and avoid vendor lock-in. I expect the NAB 2019 response to the Media Innovation Cloud Alliance to be overwhelmingly positive as a next-generation cloud alternative to the Big Three.“