IBM Buys Aspera for Big WAN Data Transfers

January 21, 2014 Alex Woodie

IBM last week completed its acquisition of Aspera, the Northern California developer of the patented “fasp” WAN acceleration technology. IBM says it plans to offer Aspera’s technology and the fasp protocol as part of its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure.

The fasp technology that Aspera sold as part of its eXtreme File Transfer (XFT) product is able to accelerate the transfer of large files by up to 99.9 percent. When applied against a large 24 GB file sent from here to China, that kind of technical mojo will reduce transmission times from 26 hours to 30 seconds. That is a serious speed up.

IBM says it plans to integrate the fasp technology into its SoftLayer cloud offering sometime in 2014. The technology will also find a home in other IBM offerings, including WebSphere Portal, e-commerce, business analytics, and managed file transfer (MFT) offerings (according to IBM’s website, it offers no fewer than six MFT products).

Aspera can boast that it’s one of the few technology companies to win an Emmy award. The company got the award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development due to the fact that nearly all the major broadcast television networks, Hollywood studios, and computer graphics animation houses use the technology to transmit huge media files.

The fasp technology is also in use in the slightly less glamorous IBM i world, where Crossroads Systems has licensed the Aspera technology to provide WAN file sharing for its SPHiNX line of disk-based backup devices.

IBM says plans to maintain Aspera’s business partnerships. Over time, those partners will transition to the IBM business partner program, the company says. Aspera currently has more than 2,000 direct customers, in the media and entertainment, government, telecommunications, and life sciences business.

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot

Tags:

CYBER-ATTACKS ON THE RISE. PROTECT WITH THE TRIPLE PLAY.

COVID-19 has not only caused a global pandemic, but has sparked a “cyber pandemic” as well.

“Cybersecurity experts predict that in 2021, there will be a cyber-attack incident every 11 seconds. This is nearly twice what it was in 2019 (every 19 seconds), and four times the rate five years ago (every 40 seconds in 2016). It is expected that cybercrime will cost the global economy $6.1 trillion annually, making it the third-largest economy in the world, right behind those of the United States and China.”1

Protecting an organization’s data is not a single-faceted approach, and companies need to do everything they can to both proactively prevent an attempted attack and reactively respond to a successful attack.

UCG Technologies’ VAULT400 subscription defends IBM i and Intel systems against cyber-attacks through comprehensive protection with the Triple Play Protection – Cloud Backup, DRaaS, & Enterprise Cybersecurity Training.

Cyber-attacks become more sophisticated every day. The dramatic rise of the remote workforce has accelerated this trend as cyber criminals aggressively target company employees with online social engineering attacks. It is crucial that employees have proper training on what NOT to click on. Cyber threats and social engineering are constantly evolving and UCG’s Enterprise Cybersecurity Training (powered by KnowBe4) is designed to educate employees on the current cutting-edge cyber-attacks and how to reduce and eliminate them.

A company is only as strong as its weakest link and prevention is just part of the story. Organizations need to have a quick response and actionable plan to implement should their data become compromised. This is the role of cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS).

Data is a company’s most valuable asset. UCG’s VAULT400 Cloud Backup provides 256-bit encrypted backups to two (2) remote locations for safe retrieval should a cyber-attack occur. This is a necessary component of any protection strategy. Whether a single click on a malicious link brings down the Windows environment or an infected SQL server feeds the IBM i, once the data is compromised, there is no going back unless you have your data readily available.

Recovery is not a trivial task, especially when you factor in the time sensitive nature of restoring from an active attack. This leads to the third play of the Triple Play Protection – DRaaS. Companies have myriad concerns once an attack is realized and a managed service disaster recovery allows employees to keep focus on running the business in a crisis state.

The combination of training employees with secure backup and disaster recovery offers companies the best chance at avoiding financial disruption in an age of stronger, more frequent cyber-attacks.

Reach out to UCG Technologies to discuss your company’s security needs and develop a data protection plan that fits you best.

ucgtechnologies.com/triple-play

800.211.8798 | info@ucgtechnologies.com