Smoke & Mirrors Deploys Aspera for High-Speed, Secure and Efficient Transfer of Media Between Global Sites

ARMONK, N.Y., 2016-02-23 11:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBM today announced that Smoke & Mirrors, a leading visual effects and full service post-production company, has selected high-speed transfer solutions from Aspera, an IBM company, as the backbone for high-performance file transfers between its international sites and global client list.

Faced with the need to efficiently and quickly handle an increased volume of media coming into and out of its facilities – amounting to over a terabyte per week – Smoke & Mirrors decided to revaluate its existing file transfer platform. The company needed an agile and scalable workflow to seamlessly handle incoming source material and masters from its clients to its London, New York and Chennai facilities. With projects being shared across an extremely talented pool of designers, artists and producers across global sites to spread the workload, the platform needed to be extremely reliable, easy to configure and administer, and capable of transferring large amounts of data quickly, easily and securely.

Smoke & Mirrors selected the Aspera faspex^TM file delivery and collaboration platform combined withAspera Connect Server to manage the transfer of all of its media internally, as well as externally with its roster of high-profile clients. Based on Aspera’s patented FASP^® transfer technology, the solutions eliminate the fundamental shortcomings of conventional, TCP-based file transfer technologies like FTP and HTTP. This enables Smoke & Mirrors to maximise its use of available bandwidth, resulting in unmatched transfer speeds and guaranteed delivery times over global distances regardless of file sizes and the transfer distance between customers, partners and production sites.

“Aspera’s high-speed transfer technology has truly revolutionised how we collaborate and move content and jobs between sites,” said Danny Whybrow, Global Head of Broadcast Services at Smoke & Mirrors. “By transferring large files more quickly we’re able to begin working on them straight away, enabling us to meet tight deadlines and better serve our clients’ needs. We’re so impressed with the speed and reliability, that we’re already thinking about how we can extend our workflow with other Aspera solutions and ultimately drive even more efficiencies across the company.”

Smoke & Mirrors has set up an Aspera faspex server in London as its main data centre, and two Aspera Connect Servers at its facilities in New York and Chennai, all connected securely with Aspera FASP Proxy. Smoke & Mirrors also have sites in Sao Paulo and Shanghai. Clients are invited to submit source materials such as original masters through Aspera dropboxes, and the content is easily moved between collaboration sites to ensure large campaigns and projects with tight deadlines stay on track. Work in progress and final material is delivered back to clients quickly and securely as standard faspex digital packages. The lightweight Connect Web Browser Plug-in integrates with all browser platforms to support high speed FASP transfers directly in the browser while Aspera FASP Proxy ensures high-speed transfers within highly restrictive network environments. Aspera Console allows Smoke & Mirrors staff to closely manage and monitors all traffic to and from clients and between the three sites.

“Smoke & Mirrors create outstanding work for their portfolio of advertising, film and music clients, and we’re excited to provide the platform that enables them to boost productivity and streamline how they collaborate and move their media around the globe,” said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Aspera.

Aspera is demonstrating its entire portfolio of high-speed file transfer, sharing and exchange solutions, including the new Aspera Files SaaS, at BVE 2016 taking place February 23-25 in London Excel on Stand F20.

About Aspera
Aspera, an IBM company, is the creator of next-generation transport technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions. Part of IBM Cloud, Aspera software is powered by the Emmy^® Award-winning FASP^® protocol to deliver the fastest, most predictable file-transfer, share and sync experience across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructure. Aspera’s core technology delivers unprecedented control over bandwidth, complete security and uncompromising reliability. Organizations across a variety of industries on six continents rely on Aspera software for the business-critical transport of their digital assets. Please visit http://www.asperasoft.com and follow us on Twitter @asperasoft for more information.

         Contact information:
         Louise Wells or Josh Paterson
         Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
         aspera@rlyl.com
         +44 (0) 207 403 8878