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MANAGEMENT
September 2017
Masstech Innovations draws on established
strengths to deliver new synergies
Can you give us an update on
the merger of Masstech and
SGL, and how the new entity is
drawing on the strengths of both
companies to provide a more
unified and integrated proposi-
tion for the broadcast and media
industry?
Joe French: The merger was con-
ceived to take advantage of several
key strengths of each organisation.
Masstech provides a 24x7x365,
broadcast engineer support call
centre operated out of Europe.
SGL clients will now have access to
that support as part of their annual
support contracts.
Masstech’s MassStore prod-
ucts provided a more complete
solution base, with transcoding
and powerful search tools that
spanned not only structured but
also unstructured data, a highly
complex and complete workflow
engine and a powerful simple UI
for a complete media asset man-
agement (MAM) experience. This
product will continue to provide
a useful solution to the enterprise
market.
SGL’s strength was always in
how complete it has integrated
to world-class solution providers
such as Avid, Belden, Vizrt, Dalet
and others for their hierarchical
storage management (HSM) solu-
tions. This tight integration allowed
those providers to offer a highly
integrated solution within their
unique market niches.
Masstech will continue to build
upon those strengths — the end-
Earlier this year, Masstech and SGL merged to form Masstech
Innovations, which aims to be the broadcast and media industry’s
largest provider of solutions for managing the lifecycle of
valuable media assets. As Masstech Innovations makes an IBC
debut this month, its president and CEO, Joe French, reveals
more to APB.
❝ The end-result of the
merger [of Masstech and
SGL] is the largest broadcast
support organisation,
as well as the largest
engineering organisation
in this sector of the
broadcast marketplace. ❞
— Joe French,
President and CEO,
Masstech Innovations
result of the merger is the largest
broadcast support organisation,
as well as the largest engineer-
ing organisation in this sector of
the broadcast marketplace. The
Masstech-SGL merger will continue
to focus on quality of products and
support services.
One of the key goals of Masstech
Innovations is to provide better
management of key media as-
sets and workflows for its cus-
tomers. In today’s multi-screen,
multi-format environment, what
do you think are some of the key
challenges facing broadcasters
and media operators?
French: Efficient usage of storage
will always be key and being able
to take advantage of preferences
is a goal. If a broadcaster wants to
hold everything on-premise using
tiered storage, or if he chooses to
use a private or public cloud, these
choices should be easy to deploy
and use, and not be a limitation of
the solution supplier.
Re-purposing content for distri-
bution will also be a key element;
therefore, integration of transcod-
ing is a fundamental component
for any solution provider in this
space. This integration will make
for more efficient movement and
deployment of content, in conjunc-
tion with a powerful workflow en-
gine that addresses the complexi-
ties of any broadcast operation.
Masstech has all of these com-
ponents integrated into an easy-
to-use interface with a powerful
search component that addresses
structured, as well as unstructured,
data as the essentials for a broad-
caster moving into the future and
facing the challenges you have
outlined above.
IBC2017 will also be the first
time the companies will be
exhibiting as Masstech Innova-
tions. What are some of the key
highlights visitors can expect?
French: Both companies have
been providing solutions in the
broadcast marketplace for more
than 15 years, and we have the
largest installed base of archived
solutions in the world. At IBC2017
booth 7.J15T, we hope to show to
both the SGL and Masstech client
base expanded feature capabilities
while emphasising our commit-
ment to support and address the
growing interest in the cloud and
complete solutions.
Flash and tape – a perfect pairing of storage technologies
The need to have data at the
fingertips of corporate managers,
producers and consumers is in-
creasing. Decisions must be made
in a timely manner, which has led to
the growing adoption of flash disk
storage also known as Solid State
Drives (SSD). This type of storage
is utilised for hot data — data that
requires rapid access. However,
over time this type of data cools
and needs a low cost and secure
place to rest in case it is recalled.
That place is LTO tape technology.
Here, we discuss what makes
SSD hot, what makes LTO tape
perfect for cool and cold data, and
how these two technologies make
the perfect storage pair.
What makes SSD tick?
SSDs are a non-volatile storage
device using integrated circuit as-
semblies as memory to store data
persistently on solid state flash
memory. SSDs are not hard drives
in the traditional sense, as there
are no moving parts involved. A
traditional hard disk drive (HDD)
consists of a spinning disk with a
read/write head on a mechanical
arm called an actuator. An SSD,
on the other hand, has an array of
semiconductor memory organised
as a disk drive using integrated
circuits.
An SSD may also be referred
to as a Solid State Disk. SSD can
provide rapid input and output
performance compared to HDDs.
SSDs can be utilised as the primary
target for very high performance
jobs with HDDs and tape as alter
nate targets, and flash SSD has the
ability to read data directly and
immediately from a specific cell
location.
High-performance ser vers,
laptops, desktops or any