Oasys and Disk Archive in Strategic Alliance

OASYS Automated Playout Ltd, supplier of
IT-based automation playout software, has formed a strategic
alliance with Disk Archive Corporation
Ltd, provider of high performance disk based archive solutions.

"At OASYS we believe in pioneering
innovative and reliable solutions to meet our clients’ specific playout needs",
explained Fraser Jardine, VP global sales at OASYS. "As our clients scale-up the number of channels they playout using OASYS
Player, and build larger and larger catalogs of media, so the need for a
cost-effective, media archive managed solution has grown. Forming a strategic
alliance with Disk Archive Corporation allows us to offer our clients a modern,
scalable and reliable media archiving solution for their playout facility that
is fully integrated with our playout solutions."

ALTO is based on a variant of the MAID architecture with
independent control of each disk in a densely packed array of affordable ‘green’ drives which are designed to support spin-down
operation. Any individual disk which is
not reading or writing is switched off, saving power and greatly
extending disk life. The result is a cost-effective alternative to a tape
library with fast access, no planned maintenance and higher security than
simple RAID storage. It provides an archive for transmission-ready
content in multi-channel playout environments supporting removable media for
vault storage, media transportation and DR.

The ALTO Content Library is used by OASYS as the central shared storage between
OASYS Player servers. The OASYS Media Library indexes all the content stored on
the ALTO, creating a metadata XML for each media file. OASYS Media Manager
manages the movement of media files to the OASYS Player servers as demanded by
each channel’s schedule.

"We are delighted to combine the
benefits of the ALTO Content Library with that of the OASYS Player through our
strategic alliance with OASYS," states Alan Hoggarth, CEO, Disk
Archive. "The combined
value proposition that the two companies offer is convincing and powerful,
replacing the traditional data tape library with ALTO to deliver a fully secure
tapeless workflow with superior performance, HA and much lower total cost of
ownership integrated with the best in IT-based software playout."