News

posted on 14 April 2008 16:00

Startup Atrato with is video-delivering sealed canisters of hard drives, is partnering with Seagate to securely deliver content to end-users.

Atrato contributes its radically new Velocity1000 arrays which are based on sealed canisters of twenty or so 2.5-inch hard drives. Atrato software and technology with spare drives means that the arrays is essentially self-healing. It also has accelerated I/O through the use of multiple 2.5-inch drive spindles. The V1000 is targeted at video collecting and video delivery businesses such as video surveillance and cable TV head-end functions which need the multiple simultaneous delivery of hundreds of video streams.

Seagate is contributing its Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drives with DriveTrust technology providing full disk encryption to secure the drive's content. V2100s with encrypting canisters, Atrato claims, will be able to:-

- Increase performance for serving non-linear editing, video-on-demand, media streaming, and other content-rich applications

- Improve security, delivering a higher degree of control for content owners and ease of use for consumers,

- Optimize cost-effectiveness for data centers, including significant savings in power consumption and rack space.

The ease of use for consumers might be a little hard to take on board as digital rights for media are involved.

Atrato and Seagate hope that encrypting V1000s will prove popular for the distribution of high-definition media content as it promises to safeguard content owners' digital rights and prevent piracy.

Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates and the organizer of storage Vision and Creative Storage conferences, said: “Digital content is the currency and lifeblood for many businesses. The present constraints to distribute and effectively monetize it have been hampered by performance, security and cost-effectiveness. Recent advancements in storage offer the chance to overcome these hurdles and enable a value-add through embedded technology. By combining Atrato’s robust, self-maintaining system with Seagate technologies such as DriveTrust hardware encryption, companies can yield a streamlined method to access and expedite critical issues in the digital distribution process.”

Atrato suggests several markets for encrypting V1000s, some of then surprising. For example, it cites 'home theater systems that range between $3,500 to $25,000 comprise over 22% of the market according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Atrato solution providers will be able to create new offerings in high-definition (and, in some cases, better-than-HD) content, helping to expand the market for theater-quality video and studio-quality audio, allowing a richer set of services to this growing customer base.'

Other market areas include home downloads, digital cinema, (cable TV) head-end distribution and high-end video surveillance.

Atrato CEO and co-founder Dan McCormick said of Seagate: “Their ability to build a robust, rich featured drive is ideally suited for the content market and is exactly what is needed to complete our vision of SAID (Self-maintaining Array of Identical Disks), which is the linchpin of our core technology and design.”

Atrato and Seagate will carry out co-marketing, joint development and industry showcase solutions. Both companies will promote and co-brand their relationship. Atrato stated 'For the sales channel, the companies will use their combined technical work to penetrate new markets and accounts while capitalizing on the home market and encryption-based environments.'

They are at work now and expect to announce joint customers in the next few months.

Seagate has a relationship with Xiotech whose recently announced Emprise arrays also use sealed canisters of hard drives, 3.5-inch ones though, and have self-healing functionality.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}