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At NAB 2016, Aspera, an IBM company and creator of technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, will showcase the new FASP 3.6 version of its high-speed file transfer software and workflow automation solutions for the broadcast and media industries including new joint solutions powered by Aspera FASP®. Aspera pioneered high speed, secure file transfer over commodity Internet WANs for the media and entertainment industry at NAB 2004. In the decade since the media supply chain has come to depend upon high-speed transfer in virtually every workflow. Cloud computing and storage are now ubiquitous, and the pace of production now demands instant-on transfer services. To meet the needs of the evolving media landscape, twelve years later at NAB 2016 Aspera launches a second era of innovation with significant new capabilities in the FASP 3.6 platform:…

Fast file transfer interoperates with high performance streaming – New stream APIs enable high-speed predictable transfer of live video and data streams over Internet WANs. Read and write file data as an input or output stream, rewrite sections of files during transport, and transport live video over long distance networks.

Multi-tenant and Natively Clustered – A new transfer system allows tenants to privately manage storage for Aspera transfers via a new access key system, and all public and private cloud storage systems, as well as SAN/NAS/local storage are supported.

Performance Breakthrough – A new ‘ascp4’ transfer application combines multi-threaded IO with the FASP protocol to transfer at 1 million files per minute, the equivalent of 10 Gigabits per second for DPX files transferred around the world. New multi-node transfers allow mass data transfers to cloud storage clusters (e.g. 120 Terabytes migrated per day).

New Aspera Watchfolder and Expanded Sync – A new cross-platform directory watchfolder service with fast, scalable file system notifications automates file, directory, and growing file transfers, supports ordered delivery of files and metadata, and centralizes management in the Aspera Console. Thelatest Aspera Sync bidirectional synchronization software now supports cloud storage, and is supported by the new Aspera Proxy.

Direct-to-Cloud Transfer Features – Aspera’s unique high-speed transfer with cloud storage now supports ten different object stores, adding HDFS, IBM Cleversafe, NetApp Cloud and the AWS GovCloud, to SoftLayer Swift, AWS S3, Azure BLOB, Google Storage, Akamai NetStorage, and Limelight Object Storage. Many new features enable faster performance and better security and functionality, including the Autoscale Transfer Cluster Manager software that automatically scales the number of Aspera server nodes for client transfer demands up and down based on user-defined policies and SLAs.

The FASP 3.6 platform makes possible new capabilities in Collaborative File Exchange, including the new Aspera Files SaaS and Faspex 4.0:

Aspera Files SaaS – Aspera’s new groundbreaking multi-tenant SaaS solution for sharing large files and data sets directly from cloud and on premise storage launched in late 2015 and now has over 500 organizations on boarded. Twenty new capabilities across the platform have been added since launch including new support for the Aspera desktop GUI, watch folder and client APIs as well as Aspera Drive 2.0.

Faspex 4.0 – Faspex 4.0 is a major new version of Aspera’s popular server software application for high speed, secure file and directory exchange integrated with email. A large number of enhancements in response to the Aspera user community advance enterprise user management, custom branding, usability, and administrative ease.

Faspex automatically distributes files and directories to the Aspera Cargo client, now with the option to integrate the new Aspera Virtual Catcher to allow broadcasters and service providers to convert traditional satellite pitcher/catcher workflows to low cost file transfers over Internet WAN using Aspera software.

Aspera Virtual Catcher (“AVC”) is a new application that works in conjunction with Aspera Cargo or Point to Point through a set of purpose-built workflows combined with configuration and status screens for ensuring pitched packages are completely received, validated and handed off to the recipient’s content management system (CMS). AVC validates received files with the ADI 1.1 specification and passes the content via direct API integration with leading CMS systems.

New Aspera Files Mobile applications for iOS and Android sport tight integration with the camera, photo gallery and 3rd party editing application to allow users to seamlessly transfer video and images directly to Files. The Faspex Mobile app expands metadata handling and support for single sign-on. A newly released Mobile Uploader for Android complements the popular iOS version for sending video and files to Aspera servers. A new modern mobile SDK simplifies integration for iOS and Android developers.

Aspera Orchestrator 2.5 – Now with over 150 third party plug-ins, Orchestrator 2.5, Aspera’s comprehensive workflow orchestration platform, adds new plugins for Dalet, Xytech, SGL FlashNet, Marquis, Emotion, ShowMgr, ARRIS CMM, DATDV, Snell, Fortium, Ateme, Minnetonka, MOG, and Baton. Many exciting new features enhance the Designer, provide step-wise versioning, and yield faster execution, and new Activity and Statistics screens show visual progress of every executing workflow and historical analytics.

The entire suite of Aspera products, On Demand Offerings and Aspera SDK will be on display at the Aspera Booth, SL4910.