Migration: Broadcasting industry gets digital data storage solutions offer

As N i g e r i a moves closer to the June 17, 2015 deadline for migration from analogue to digital broadcasting with the con- sequent challenges and uncertainties, an international technology organisation, NetApp in partner- ship with 3CNET Nigeria Limited, a fully fledged Nigerian company, is providing data storage solution to the broadcasting industry on the transition from tape to disk storage. Though there are still doubts about Nigeria meet- ing up with the deadline of June 17, 2015 set by International Telecommunication Union in 2006 for its member countries but NetApp in collaboration with 3CNET believes that early preparations by broadcasting organisations would make them obviate the consequences of the migration. Presently, most broad- casting organisations devote big rooms with certain temperature for the storage of their data especially tapes and the tapes are damaged when the temperature is low or high. Again, locating a particular tape, even with a footnote in the shelf takes time. At a workshop recently in Lagos for media and entertainment industries, NetApp and 3CNET strong- ly believe that under the digital broadcasting, tape data storage would be cumbersome and difficult. “Today, there are trends and things are evolving and the ability to evolve at the right time will keep organisations as ongoing business concern”, Tunji Aina, system engineer with NetApp said at the workshop. The workshop focused on the systems and infra- structure component as required by broadcast and new media companies as they begin to expand on the early concepts of digital workflows to incorporate centralised, disk-based archival storage as a key – engine to fuel both productivity and innovation. He noted that in the broadcast industry there are some managers who would not do away with tapes or would like to co- exist with chip disks “but what we are telling the broadcast industry is to keep their data online. How far you keep data with disk will depend on how fast they will be retrieved”, he said. Tunji, who said that NetApp which recently partnered with 3CNET which deals on connectivity, cloud and technology solution contracts has introduced various storage systems that would help the broadcast industry in storage and easy retrievals. “With NetApp, the same storage architecture that delivers improved performance for back-office applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SAP, and Oracle can also help improve performance and accessibility for online, near-line and archival storage of core video, audio and image assets”.