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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J Fieb who wrote (1174)	4/21/1999 9:42:00 PM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4808

nab.org Get in the Fibre Channel Loop By William T. Hayes TV Technology The Fibre Channel Loop Community is much like the community of the future featured at the World's Fair — it promises to make our lives more exciting, profitable and enjoyable. The Fibre Channel Loop Community is an international non-profit organization with a membership of over 100 major companies representing virtually every facet of the digital video world. It is refreshing to see this many competitors working together to develop a standard so that the end user is not locked into any single-source, proprietary solution for what is an important challenge for us all. Now that we have turned our video into data, how do we share it? All of us have experienced trying to open a word processor or spreadsheet document only to see the error of the file not being recognized because of format or version differences. Voilà! Enter SANaganza! The creation is a storage area network (SAN) that is a shared repository for A/V data that allows all users simultaneous access to all the material on the network. The SAN is linked via Fibre Channel and essentially functions as an operating layer underneath an NT server network. It therefore takes advantage of the data management and trafficking strengths of the NT network but does not tie up the network with high volume A/V data. The higher level NT network provides the metadata control, while the SAN network ships that actual data to and from the workstation. No Need for Translation Because of the high level of cooperation in the Fibre Channel Loop Community, the workstation and the tools used on the workstation are completely independent. Mac-, NT- and UNIX-based systems can share, modify and store data without any need to translate file formats. All translation is handle by the SAN operating system and is transparent to the end users. Multiple Applications The initial market seems to be the post production industry, but there are many applications for this technology in the broadcast industry. The ShowTime network currently uses a SAN to create promotional material that airs between programs on eight channels. However, it is easy to see where a news operation could use this technology to allow reporters and producers to view material while it is being edited. Given the fact that the Fibre Channel connection allows for full bandwidth material at the workstation, actual editing can be done without requiring the interim step of recording a low-res version of the material, which most see as a Band-Aid step. Anyone who is looking for a better way to share, modify or transport the data that our A/V material has become should spend some time in the Fibre Channel Loop Community at the Sands. It appears to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood.