40 TVBEurope Broadcasting in the Cloud


www.tvbeurope.com May 2012


Storage of tens of terabytes is a relatively small system


A practical application of cloud storage in broadcast


There are significant business benefits for any organisation in cloud computing, says Jim Cook, chief executive officer, Arkivum


CLOUD COMPUTING is undoubtedly a hot topic at present, and there is considerable interest in developing cloud-based solutions for broadcast. Some of the major players — such as Avid, Autodesk and Quantel — are developing integrated solutions for production, while leading service providers — including Sohonet and Ascent — are extending their offering to include cloud storage. There are significant business benefits for any organisation in cloud computing. Shifting responsibility for managing processing or storage means that responding to unexpected peaks in the business are no longer a worry. Businesses do not have to provide buildings, secure power or air conditioning for the hardware. Perhaps most attractive of all, the cost moves from capital expenditure to an operational cost: companies pay for the services they use, rather than having to invest in a lot of heavy iron in preparation for a time when it will be needed. On the other hand, there are those in the broadcast industry who may find a degree of


programme were either kept in house or sent on film or tape to a specialist storage company: in the digital world long term preservation requires special skills, either in house or through a partnership. To be of value, that storage specialist has to be able to guarantee the data 100%. Five nines — any number of nines — is not good enough. Recorded material is the primary asset of a production business, so it cannot be put at any risk. My company, Arkivum, was launched in 2011 to offer a 100% guaranteed data archive service. We use technology developed from a four-year research project at the University of Southampton, which looked to create an innovative approach to planning and managing large- scale, sustainable and integrated digital archive solutions. BBC R&D, Ovation Data Services, University of Edinburgh, Xyratex and IT Innovation were partners in the project, which benefited from UK government funding. As we offer an archive solution, not a transactional service, Arkivum can use tape as the storage medium. Our


Jim Cook: “We have two geographically diverse data centres, so if one is affected by any sort of disaster, from power problems to fire or flood, we still have 100% data availability and can rebuild quickly”


Disaster recovery We have two geographically diverse data centres, so if one is affected by any sort of disaster, from power problems to fire or flood, we still have 100% data availability and can rebuild quickly. At Arkivum, we also offer our


Good television programming will have a valuable life of 50 years or more: in that time we will have passed through many more iterations of the LTO format


comfort in retaining production capability — editing and so on — in-house, or at their favourite post house. They have had experience of managing raw content since the dawn of television, with the logging of film, tape and now data files being a well-established practice. What is not a core business


for a production company, and thus ideal for outsourcing, is the long-term storage of data. In the past, archive copies of a


technology partner is IBM, and our architecture ensures full data integrity by migrating from tape to tape, and from tape format to tape format, as required. Good television programming will have a valuable life of 50 years or more: in that time we will have passed through many more iterations of the LTO format and we will probably be using technologies that are currently in the R&D lab.


clients another storage location with an escrow service, giving reassurance for those businesses nervous of entrusting their archives to a third-party provider. One of the challenges for


broadcasters or production companies setting up their own data archives is one of scale. Storage of tens of terabytes is a relatively small system, whereas an independent archive will be handling much greater quantities of data.


The significance of this is that it is easier to build resilience into larger systems, through the equipment and through the process. A specialist data archive, for example, can buy tape stock from different manufacturers and production batches. If a tape fails prematurely then the tapes from the same batch are likely to have the same fault. By ensuring that the data is stored on a different batch from a different manufacturer the possibility of a catastrophic failure is eliminated. Content owners need


reassurance that their archive data is secure, both from loss and theft. Content is encrypted at the customer end before it is transferred to the data centres, using a industry standard AES encryption: we do not have access to the encryption keys. For production companies using cloud services, they can archive data on our platform directly, giving them additional protection at each stage of the workflow. In our data centres, check sums


are calculated as the data is encrypted, as the data is written


into the archive, and routinely thereafter to track data loss. By spotting bit failures as soon as they occur the internal data management system can maintain complete integrity of the content. We would describe our solution as a ‘white box’. It is transparent — customers can visit our data centres and see their tapes if they want — but there is no need to understand what is going on inside. From the customer site the appliance looks like a file share: files are copied to or from the archive, with the software automatically encrypting or opening the content as it goes. Just as providing a controlled


environment for the storage of cans of film has always been seen as a specialist activity, so there should be no need for broadcasters and production companies to invest in the complex skills and expensive hardware needed to maintain a data archive, provided, of course, they can be guaranteed 100% reliability of access to their priceless assets.


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