XenData has built a business on facilitating the connection between LTO-5 tape archives and all the stuff in a facility's "tapeless" workflow – all the gear that expects to be writing to disks, not tapes, at the end of the day. Basically, XenData figures out ways to make those tapes look like disk-based storage, eliminating one more workflow headache as vendors and users work out how to get all of their equipment working in harmony. At IBC this week, XenData is stepping up with a new revision of its flagship server product and new technology collaborations with companies like Harmonic and Avid. We asked company CEO Phil Storey to give us a preview, and asked him what's next after tape.
So what’s XenData showing at IBC?

We will be showing XenData6 Server, which is the sixth generation of our flagship product. It’s installed in hundreds of places in over 50 countries – it’s at TMZ.com, and there are multiple systems at the BBC. It runs on a Windows Server 2008 or 2003, manages an LTO tape library, and makes archiving to LTO just like writing to RAID on a Windows server.

What’s new in version 6?

The biggest thing is its compatibility with the workstation products that we started shipping earlier this year. It opens up all sorts of workflow possibilities. You could, for example, use a low-cost $5200 system for ingest using a standalone drive, then take the LTO tapes with 1.5 TB capacity aand put them in the tape library. Within a few minutes, it’s available over the network. That’s the X1500, which started shipping in March. You can also use the server product to create replica copies of LTO tapes automatically. We’re already seeing demand for multiple uses of the two products working together.

What about the recent technology announcement with Harmonic?

Their Media Application Server [MAS] will manage video assets on Omneon storage devices, whether it’s Mediadeck, Spectrum video servers, or their high-speed MediaGrid storage system. It will move media around, index it, do searches, create low-res proxies, etc., but they haven’t had a way to store lots of material cost-effectively. Well, now they do, because they’re adding an interface to support LTO archives. We’ve been working with them on this so that you will be able to set up rules in the MAS and automatically move assets to the archive, restore them, and so on. In short, MAS now supports archives, and the first one it supports is ours.

So is this a set-up customers would buy through Harmonic, or through XenData, or some combination?

They’d be buying their MediaGrid and MAS and so on through Omneon/Harmonic, but they would have an interface that would work with the XenData LTO archive. And we would supply our standard XenData6 Server plus a special integration module. We have many customers around the world who have XenData LTO archives and Harmonic storage of one sort or another, and a number of them have been clamoring for this kind of integration.

Are you also collaborating on integrated workflows with other companies?

Earlier this year, we announced something similar with Avid [for their Fastbreak broadcast automation systems]. So both Avid and Harmonic have decided that they don’t want to get into this relatively specialized development area of managing LTO archives.

Lots of our readers are Avid users. Is there anything else on the Avid front?

We just announced a collaboration with Marquis Broadcast. They have solved the Avid Media Composer archive problem. If you want to archive a project or a sequence, it’s very tedious to do it manually with Media Composer. Marquis has a product called Parking that takes care of this with a few clicks. You can take your entire project, put it in one big container file, and store it to an archive location. We’re making sure Parking is compatible with XenData6 Server so they can all live on the same Windows server.

Can you give us a preview of what else might be coming?

In another month or two, we’ll announce a cost-effective combination of XenData6 Server on some very cost-effective hardware with Parking as an option to address the needs of the post-production community. That announcement will really be aimed at workgroups of NLEs. So let’s just say we’ve got all the components ready for what I think is going to be a hot product in a couple of months’ time.

OK. Finally, what’s your prognosis for tape? What’s on the far horizon to unseat it in terms of archiving technology?

I don’t see a clear path to its replacement. Inasmuch as spinning disk is increasing in capacity and becoming more cost-effective per GB all the time, so is LTO. It’s jumping from one generation to the next. The next generation will be LTO-6, with 3 TB [of capacity per tape]. To my mind they are complementary. If you want to keep large files, as we have in the video space, for a long time and you rarely access them, it’s just so expensive to keep them safely and securely on spinning disk. If you need very little access, you just put it on the shelf and it costs you next to nothing to maintain your material.

Our server solutions all have RAID and an LTO tape library. When you think about alternative technologies … solid state drives (SSDs) are starting to replace disks in some applications, but they’re doing that slowly. And then to take the leap that they will replace LTO tape? That’s years away, if ever. SSD is probably where I’d put my money, but it’s way, way off.

For more information: www.xendata.com.