By Charles F. Moreira
The financial services, healthcare and the CME (communications, media and entertainment) industries are the top three in the world for IT spending, thus accounting for 40% of worldwide IT spending, according to Jeff Greenwald, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) senior solutions marketing manager for Communications, Media and Entertainment.
“A typical 720p high-definition video video file occupies around 81GB, which is an opportunity for HDS,” said Greenwald.
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| L-R Wee Kai Teck, Shane Archiquette – HDS CTO for CME and Cloud and Jeffery Greenwald |
HDS sees major growth potential for the CME in 10 economies namely Australia & New Zealand (ANZ), China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Among them, the CME sector altogether spends US$5 billion per year on storage solutions, while film studios and animation houses altogether spend US$1.9 billion per year on storage.
“According to Lucintel’s ‘Global M&E Industry Analysis 2012-2017: Industry Trend, Profit and Forecast Analysis’, the global Media & Entertainment industry is forecast to reach US$1,289B by 2017 with a CAGR of 5% during 2012-2017,” said Wee Kai Teck, managing director of Hitachi Data Systems Sdn. Bhd. “Over the last five years, the Asia-Pacific region also witnessed the highest growth and will continue to see highest growth during the same period despite the economic uncertainty.”
“While the M&E industry in Malaysia is still relatively small compared to Hollywood, it however is a significant growth sector, with media content rapidly growing in format, size and density,” Wee added.
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| Typical Hitachi NAS solution |
“HDS provides production houses with a complete, end-to-end content development solution,” Greenwald said in conjunction with the screening of the film, Jack the Giant Slayer in Kuala Lumpur on 12 March, 2013.
The visual special effects in that film were produced by Soho VFX, a Toronto, Canada-based visual effects, 3-D animation and post-production studio, using a Hitachi NAS (network-attached storage) platform to store and manage the complex visual effects.
In the post-production process, multiple terminals are needed to handle large amounts of image data quickly and efficiently, putting a high demand on the overall performance of Soho VFX’s IT infrastructure.
To meet these demands, Soho VFX uses the high performance and scalable Hitachi platform, which efficiently stores and manages the massive image data and makes it secure and instantly accessible. These capabilities lower the total cost of ownership, migrate data more quickly, and enable more reiterations of shots because renders are completed more quickly.
“Our relationship with Soho VFX demonstrates the importance of IT infrastructure to key brands that cannot afford to take risks with their mission-critical operations and Soho VFX has to manage challenges similar to those of many enterprise businesses — reliability, data protection, agility, and efficiency. Hitachi NAS Platform solves these challenges by enabling media and entertainment companies to accelerate business operations and drive success,” said Greenwald.
HDS currently has some 200 people in Malaysia and some CME customers, including in the government sector.
Right now, it focuses on training, skills development and is talking to partners to provide vertical CME solutions. It also focuses on the “Emerging 7” (or “E 7”) countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico and others where it sees growth in demand for its Hitachi NAS platform among their respective CME sectors.
