ass Storage Quarterly: Multimedia
Margin Boosters -- Implementing
storage solutions for customers'
multimedia systems can earn you hefty
profits
Although you may think of multimedia as just another buzzword, it may pay
to think again. The storage aspect of multimedia alone is enough to land
you some hefty margins and to keep your foot in the door as an expert
in-the-know.
Multimedia storage sales offer VARs higher margin opportunities than do
simpler storage sales-often two to three times as much. But you' re not
going to come by that additional margin easily. A VAR who wants to take
advantage of the trends in multimedia storage must work at it. The true
multimedia customer has special storage needs, and your real value-add is
in learning about new, related storage developments and explaining how they
can meet those needs in productive-and creative- ways.
"Multimedia" can be anything from a simple presentation prepared at the
desktop to an elaborate, multigigabyte system for digitally editing movies
and sound. While all multimedia applications share some basic qualities
that set them apart from other kinds of applications, such qualities become
easier to identify as applications move toward the high end.
Who Is a Multimedia Storage Customer?
Multimedia storage customers vary from high-end to desktop. That's because
multimedia producers are no longer confined to Hollywood or the corporate
art department. As tools have improved and the need for multimedia has
grown, people throughout the organization have begun to perform multimedia
tasks on their desktops, presenting a significant challenge for the storage
VAR. In such cases, you're often selling to a less sophisticated market
that needs more education and preparation before closing the sale.
Meanwhile, traditional multimedia markets such as graphic arts, prepress,
video production and animation have become even more digitized, using more
powerful computers tied to large disk arrays on ever-faster networks. "Two
years ago, someone in prepress or multimedia would have
considered a server with 20 or 30 GB of storage fairly sizable, " says Bill
Bedford, vice president of technical marketing for Raidtec Corp., a
privately held maker of high-end RAID products in Roswell, Ga. "Today,
that's almost entry-level. We have people talking about installing a 500-GB
server this summer and growing it to more than 1 TB this year."
That's because files tend to be much larger in most multimedia arenas than
files in database and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications.
"In our field, we have to move 100-MB files in graphics, and video is even
more," says Johan Hybinette, vice president of engineering for Hybinette
Inc., a $4 million Lakewood, Colo., systems integrator serving the prepress
and video markets. A single data record or a transaction, however, is
unlikely to run more than a few kilobytes.
The High End: Beyond Capacity
Beyond capacity needs, to add complexity, high-end throughput has to be
fast enough to avoid jerkiness in animation, nonlinear editing and, to a
lesser extent, audio environments. This means that a specialized multimedia
solution tends to be a high-end sale with very demanding storage
requirements.
Ron Margolis, president of Intelligent Media, a Venice, Calif., integrator
specializing in prepress and video production, says in his market area,
data bandwidth is very large. "In high-quality, online video, you're
talking about 300 Kb a frame," he says. "That's 9 Mbps. And you've got two
streams of that." Add in several audio channels and you're looking at 22
Mbps of throughput. "You need a tremendous amount of speed and you use up
storage quickly," he says.
This is the crux of multimedia storage requirements. It is also the place
where you earn your money. To succeed in the high-end multimedia market,
the VAR must be familiar with the rapidly evolving technology and how it
applies to the multimedia user's special needs. Meeting those needs
requires high-capacity, high-throughput storage systems such as the
four-multigigabyte RAID tower/two Mac edit station Intelligent Media
installed for its client, Stargate Films, to edit the television movie
Asteroid. The requirements also change quickly as the technology evolves.
Just nine months ago, Intelligent Media used advanced SCSI at Stargate
Films. Today, Margolis says he'd probably go with Fibre Channel-Arbitrated
Loop (FC-AL)
The usual way to handle multiple gigabytes of fast storage today is with
RAID. That's generally the approach suppliers in the high-end multimedia
market are taking. However, even in something as standard as RAID, there
are some important differences between the multimedia market and the more
common applications for array technology. For one, multimedia users are
more concerned with speed and throughput than with the security issues that
drive other RAID buyers.
That is why some people see the RAID market fragmenting in two: lower-
performance units, some with controllers built onto PC motherboards, and
high-end controllers, which offer high throughput and sell at premium
prices. Simon Fridman, president of Syred Data Systems Inc. , a start-up
RAID controller vendor, counts multimedia among the high- end markets,
noting that Syred's sister company in France already provides RAID
controllers to French television stations for use in video editing.
To feed the high-end market, companies such as ATTO Technology Inc. and
Syred have begun to offer high-end controllers. Syred's first product, for
example, is a $2,100 RAID controller with three Ultra- Wide SCSI channels,
a 100-MHz, 486DX processor and up to 64 MB of EDO RAM.
But even those speeds won't be fast enough for long. Multimedia puts a
different sort of load on the storage system than a database or OLTP
application. For example, in multimedia, seek time is relatively less
important, while streaming throughput and disk defragmentation are much
more so. That's why RAID's combination of high capacity (obtained from
multiple drives in a single array) and high throughput (obtained by
striping data across several drives to speed up reads and writes) makes it
the solution of choice for high-end multimedia apps.
Demands for capacity and throughput become even greater the higher you move
into the multimedia market. That's why Fridman says Syred 's
next-generation controller product will use a proprietary 64-bit
microprocessor and offer 160-Mbps throughput on Fibre Channel.
The implication of all this is a profit opportunity. "At this level, you
can't buy a [disk] array off the shelf," Fridman says. "It's so
complicated, you have to have help. VARs are going to be the strong
shoulder that companies look to more and more."
Technologies And Trends
Multimedia requirements, as well, differ depending on the type of
technology you choose to employ as well. Besides hard disk uses such as
RAID, for example, CD-ROMs and CD-Recordable (CD-R) devices are used
differently in high-end and desktop multimedia applications.
Today, it is not unusual for a graphic artist to have 20 or 30 CD- ROMs of
clip art, fonts and other material that he or she needs to access
constantly. If several artists are networked, they may all need access to
those shared images. That usually means employing a CD-ROM library, though
it's not uncommon to find a single worker in this type of environment with
a library of his or her own. Just imagine the sales potential of that
trend.
Another important trend in multimedia is collaboration. "[Customers] want
three or four multimedia workers or creative developers to be able to
access the same files at the same time, yet have the underlying
workstations provide traditional file and record locking [features], "
Bedford notes. Here, multimedia storage becomes workgroup storage, and it
introduces a whole series of considerations from network bandwidth to how
far you can physically run the cables. Bedford says this trend toward
shared storage is causing Raidtec to broaden its approach. "Instead of
thinking just in terms of storage focus, we need to bring in a network
orientation."
Gadzoox Microsystems Inc., a privately held maker of storage and related
network devices, has coined the term "storage array network" to describe
the changes occurring in multimedia storage. A storage array network
combines multiple high-performance drives with a high-speed network,
interconnecting them and tying them to the users' workstations, according
to Gadzoox. Users often have so much storage and speeds that are so high
that issues such as connecting the workstation/PC to the storage array
become almost as important as the storage itself. Otherwise, the network
bottlenecks the storage at best, and at worst, you have serious stability
problems.
As a result, high-end multimedia storage sales often become intimately
involved with LAN issues such as the type of network combined with the
drive arrays you've employed. So far, the leading contenders are high-speed
SCSI (usually Fast-and-Wide or differential SCSI), FC-AL or, increasingly,
gigabit Ethernet. All of them have the potential to handle the bandwidth
and all have their champions.
Down On the Desktop
But high-end applications aren't the only places you'll find increasing
storage and throughput demands; desktop requirements are rising as well.
Jim Porter, president of DiskTrend Inc., a Mountain View, Calif. , market
research firm, points out that transmitting full-motion, full-screen video
on a desktop system requires a sustained data rate of about 5 Mbps. That's
well within the range of a modern SCSI controller, but it still means a
heavy storage requirement.
As a result, adding storage components to the desktop user's portfolio can
be a blessing and a headache for VARs. When dealing with a prepress
customer, for example, it's important to find out what kinds of media the
customer's service bureau requires. While prepress has come to the desktop,
high-quality reproduction hasn't. Service bureaus take the material from
the desktop and turn it into negatives for printers. This means the
transfer from the desktop to the service bureau is still a critical market
for removable mass storage.
Usually, the user will require an Iomega Zip or Jaz drive, a SyQuest
cartridge drive or a WORM drive of some sort. Zip disks, for example, have
become a de facto standard for exchanging images and other graphics between
multimedia sites. But determining which storage peripherals the user needs
isn't enough. When multiple devices for multiple uses are called for, the
combined blessing and problem of device proliferation comes into play,
causing headaches for you in terms of peripheral logistics and margin in
terms of increased sales opportunities.
On a PC, there are only so many slots to use for storage devices. If a
multimedia customer has a couple of multigigabyte hard disks, a tape drive
for backup and needs to add one or more Zip or LS-120 drives, you and the
customer are going to have a problem finding places to put it all.
Several manufacturers are beginning to offer solutions, though. For
example, $363 million Exabyte Corp. has what it calls its Eagle Nest, a
universal docking station which can accept and interchange nest- ready
Travan tape drives, LS-120 floppy drives, hard disks and Iomega Zip drives.
The base price point for the Nest and one peripheral is $300 to $500.
MicroNet Technology Inc., a privately held storage vendor, has a docking
station called DataDock, which comes with as many as seven slots for
interchanging storage devices.
Optical Options
Yet another device competing for space on the multimedia desktop is the
CD-R drive. In the past two years, CD-R has become an increasingly visible
part of the multimedia scene. One of the reasons for CD-R' s rapid
acceptance has been price. "Today, the price point of CD-R is down in the
$400 to $500 range, from $3,000 to $4,000 five years ago," Porter says.
That, combined with new editing tools that make CD-R easier to use, is
causing the market to surge.
Even projects that will ultimately be handed to CD production houses for
print runs in the thousands still go through a CD-R stage today, Porter
says. CD-R is the logical method to make "test" and "proof" copies for
approvals. "If you're doing something for distribution on CD, then
typically you'd use CD-R to make a write-once copy to try out the material
and see how it works," Porter says. "You might use it to get approvals, and
then after you've gone through all the required revisions, you're ready for
the master to be stamped out. CD-R becomes the method of doing individual
project-oriented work at each revision level."
Still, the market is expected to shift to 4.7-GB digital video disk (DVD)
in another year or two. DVD's initial attraction is its capacity. But
Porter says it will take at least three years before shipments of DVD will
exceed shipments of CD-ROM. The issues holding it back are the price of the
drives and the availability of content on disk. "If you go into a store,
you see rows of material on CD-ROM," Porter says. "That's what's driving
the shipments of CD-ROM today. As [DVD- ROM] starts to come down in price,
and as the amount of available content starts to grow, you'll start to see
substantial shipments. "
Meanwhile, would-be DVD producers are facing a storage bottleneck of their
own. "There is no equivalent to the [CD-R] in the 4.7-GB size of DVD,"
Porter says. "If you're going to make a copy of your masterpiece and try it
out, there's tape, which can be a big nuisance. It will be a couple of
years before we have full 4.7-GB DVD-R [write- once, recordable DVD]; the
rewriteable DVDs will probably come along at the same time."
This makes 4.7 GB a magical spec for removable mass storage, a goal for
many vendors. SyQuest, for example, has already demonstrated a removable
4.7-GB cartridge drive called the Rocket, which it hopes to market ahead of
its competition. Other companies, too, are zeroing in on the 4.7-GB size
for removable mass storage as well.
Clearly, multimedia storage sales are an excellent example of the way
today's savvy VARs can make money. While basic mass storage is becoming
more of a commodity market, specialized areas such as multimedia offer VARs
new, exciting storage opportunities. New products with new capabilities are
constantly appearing. Stay on top of the trends, understand your customers'
multimedia businesses, and you'll encounter a myriad of opportunities to
boost your margins while building customer loyalty.
---
-Quick Scan
Atto Technology Inc. Amherst, N.Y. (716) 691-1999, www.attotech.com
Exabyte Corp., Eagle Division Boulder, Colo. (800) 392-2983, www.exabyte.
com
Gadzoox Microsystems Inc. San Jose, Calif. (408) 360-4950, www.gadzoox. com
MicroNet Technology Inc. Irvine, Calif. (714) 453-6100, www.micronet. com
Syred Data Systems Inc. Howell, N.J . (908) 886-1400, www.syred.com
Copyright c 1997 CMP Media Inc.
Rick Cook, Mass Storage Quarterly: Multimedia Margin Boosters --
Implementing storage solutions for customers' multimedia systems can earn
you hefty profits., VarBusiness, 07-01-1997, pp 119.
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