DataDirect Networks, a leading provider of high performance storage network appliances, has announced that Chinese company Sobey Digital Technology has chosen the company's S2A 3000 Silicon Storage Appliances to serve as a powerful, cost efficient and easy to manage storage networking infrastructure for broadcasting customers.

DataDirect's S2A 3000 overcomes the limitations of first generation storage networks by bringing application acceleration with high quality of service to broadcasters and professionals in a scalable, plug and play appliance, says an official release. The S2A 3000 allows broadcasters to quickly deploy a complete high performance SAN ranging in capacity from 500 GB to 14 terabytes in a physically small yet powerfully efficient package.

Based on DataDirect's proven Silicon Storage Appliance technology in use at broadcast facilities around the world, the 1U high S2A 3000 can simultaneously support NLE, CG, playout and browse stations, supplying over 400 hours of 50Mbit/sec MPEG2@ML content to 80 concurrent streams to broadcasting and production environments. With "format independence" that guarantees scaling of capacity and streams from highly-compressed all the way to HD and beyond, the S2A 3000 appliance supplies an aggregate bandwidth up to 800 megabytes per second to workgroups typically consisting of one to twenty-four Linux, Unix, Windows NT/2000, Sun, AIX, Macintosh and SGI compute nodes.

By choosing DataDirect's S2A 3000 as the foundation of their storage network, broadcasters and creative professionals can achieve simplicity and affordability along with high stream count, rock solid audio and video with excellent storage and host scalability. Customers using DataDirect's Silicon Storage appliances include the E! Networks, Time Warner Cable, BBC and Star TV.


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