In Broadcast - January 2015 - 52

52

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 1 | January 2015

InReply

Signiant - Hybrid SaaS Large
File Transfer Solutions
Signiant VP of Product Management Rick Clarkson discusses hybrid
SaaS and how media & entertainment paved the way for other dataintensive industries...
InBroadcast: How are your
services changing to meet customer
demands?
Rick Clarkson: Signiant started
out creating on-premises software
to transfer huge code bases around
the world for global software
development. But it was actually a
pretty narrow use at that time.
Then in the mid-2000s, Signiant was
adopted by most of the large media
& entertainment companies as the
industry transitioned from tape to ﬁle
based workﬂows, and our technology
developed and spread in response to
their needs.
It's not often acknowledged, but the
media industry pioneered the practice
of transferring large unstructured data
sets over the Internet. They had the
original "big data," as we like to say.
And with all the advances in image
resolution technologies, they still have
the biggest ﬁles.

SkyDrop: Signiant's SaaS solution

After several years working within
the infrastructures and data centres of
companies like BBC, Disney and NBC,
we wanted to embrace the potential
of cloud computing and create
solutions that would work for both
our enterprise customers and smaller
companies. We did extensive R&D and
released our ﬁrst SaaS solution, Media
Shuttle, in 2012.
Of course, we were still responsible
for the security of our customer's
intellectual
property,
so
we
implemented the hybrid aspect of our
SaaS using an SDN-like approach in
order to keep security standards high.
In fact, Signiant pioneered - and
to date is still the only company -
building SaaS solutions for large ﬁle
transfer.
Frankly, at ﬁrst, there was a lot

of hesitation in the industry around
using the cloud, but eventually the
majority of our customers wanted to
take advantage of the operational and
cost beneﬁts of cloud solutions. At this
point, many of them say they can't
keep up with the pace of their industry
without it. They are producing content
at an extremely high rate for an
increasingly global viewership,
while incorporating the work of
more and more indie houses.
InB: What criteria does
the market use to make buying
decisions regarding your services?
RC: Ease-of-use and speed are
probably the top criteria. People
want a really well designed UX so that
employees and partners can use it
without training. And, because a lot of
people are frustrated with FTP, they
are looking for much faster and more
reliable transfers. Also, no ﬁle size
limits and, again, security is very
important.
Another major one is ﬂexibility,
which means the ability to scale
to high and low use times, easily
integrate multiple endpoint types
and prioritise bandwidth. A uniﬁed
central control is also essential
when dealing with multiple endpoints
and many different projects at one
time.

Really, anyone who is still using FTP
to send large ﬁles will start looking for
something better and ultimately need
solutions like ours. We are trying our
best to get Signiant's name out there,
because many more industries are now
struggling through the same issues as
the media pioneers.

Signiant Media Shuttle
was released in 2012

InB: Any innovations ahead that
you can discuss?
RC: Sure. SkyDrop, our SaaS solution
for the accelerated transfers of large
ﬁles to and from cloud storage, has
some new developments.
SkyDrop initially only integrated with
Amazon S3, but in early 2015 it will
include Microsoft Azure and Google
Cloud Platform as well, so you're never
locked in to one provider and can
easily switch between them. This is
important for a few reasons.
Right now Amazon S3 is leading
the charge in terms of ﬁrst mover
advantage and market share, but
Microsoft and Google are actively
winning business, creating a price war.
So we wanted to let customers take

advantage of that competitive market
and the best prices at any one time.
This "storage independence" is an
extension of our innovation around
storage choice in general, encouraging
the use of intelligent strategy for
tiered storage policies. It's important
to have the freedom to choose the
security level and appropriate storage
for different ﬁles. For example,
in Media Shuttle, our hybrid SaaS
solution for person-to-person ﬁle
transfer, we allow customers to choose
between their on-premises and cloud
storage.
InB: Give some examples of your
services in action?
RC: To give you an example everyone
will know, Discovery has been a longtime customer and uses Signiant at
almost every level of its operations.
They have an extensive library of SD
and HD assets that they make viewable
worldwide through a network of 100
plus partners, including Discovery
Channel, TLC and Animal Planet
internally, and many outside partners.
They send a lot of content to Latin
America, for example.
So, if you're a Shark Week, Myth
Busters or Gold Rush fan, you're
probably watching a programme
that was sent to the broadcaster with
Signiant.

The SaaS model really shines with
many of these considerations, as well
as with cost, because you don't have
to invest in infrastructure and you only
pay for what you use.
InB:
Which
territories
or
industries are showing particular
activity?
RC: We've always been strong in
North American and Europe, and
increasingly in Japan and across Asia.
And, now that other industries are
embracing data intensive practices,
Signiant is being adopted in spaces like
life sciences and geo-imaging, which is
exciting.

Shark Week 2014: Deep Blue - one of the biggest great white sharks ever ﬁlmed
(Discovery / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.signiant.com/products/media-shuttle/ http://www.signiant.com/products/skydrop/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nB83-5ZXaTY
In Broadcast - January 2015

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