Secure Big Data Transfer at Speed and Scale with IBM Aspera

Until recently architects produced two dimensional drawings, movies were captured on 35mm film and couriers ferried contracts amounting to hundreds of pages to clients for a wet ink signature.

Now the world has gone digital with 3D design packages, 4k/8k graphics and electronic signatures paving the way for business to share sensitive and time-critical large data files more quickly. And that data is travelling further than ever before. Globalisation has exploded in recent times thanks to advances in technology¹.

In particular, services have grown 60% faster than trade in goods during the last decade – some sectors, including IT services and business services, growing two to three times faster².

Operating in a data-driven global economy poses many operational challenges – perhaps the biggest being how to actually share those large digital files.

Consider that to send a 10 gigabyte (GB) file, it can take up to 20-hours on a typical 100Mbps line, using standard TCP-based file transfer tools³. That is simply too slow.

It’s no wonder that 95% of businesses claim managing unstructured data is a problem for their business⁴.

How to achieve vision to value, faster

Size: give your team reliable access to data

Most file share software limits the size of file that can be transferred – in many cases to just 20GB – this causes massive technical issues. Remove the limitation on file size, while delivering high availability and scalability, and give users the freedom to choose how they collaborate by enabling them to access whatever they need from across your data estate.

Speed: get data where it needs to be faster

Transferring files between servers in the same data centre is simple because they’re in one secure environment. But we’re operating in a global market now. Achieve near-zero latency to  deliver data faster, regardless of the size of your files or the distance they need to travel.

Security: stay in control of data protection

The growth of remote working during 2020 has increased the threat landscape considerably. According to a report from Interpol, “Cybercriminals are developing and boosting their attacks at an alarming pace,” with one of its private sector partners reporting a 569% increase in malicious registrations⁵.

Protect your data with a range of security capabilities, including user access controls, encryption and data integrity verification, as well as virus scanning, ad insertion and digital fingerprinting. And consider how workflow can automate and synchronise file movement.

Practical applications for the modern world

IBM Aspera® moves data of any size across any distance at speed, while maintaining maximum security and retaining the integrity of the file so it gets there in one piece.

If we consider what IT departments have been busy doing this year, the priority has been deploying virtual machines to enable remote working. Within enterprise IT, Aspera is proven to speed-up virtual machine imaging and innovation on a global scale with high-speed data transfer – National Instruments accelerated its development by 95%⁶.

And then sales and marketing teams have quickly changed the way they communicate with customers and partners. Here, Aspera makes sharing large digital assets, like videos, webinar presentations and demo environments, much faster while achieving compliance.

Also, there are specific industries with compelling use cases because they’re reliant on sharing larger digital files containing sensitive and time-critical data. The following case studies from IBM demonstrate how these key industry applications are perfectly positioned to benefit:

Media and entertainment: Sundance Film Festival automates the delivery of 12,000 films globally because moving high-res movies, hundreds of terrabytes (TB) in size from the studio to post-production is effortless. ⁷.

Life sciences and pharmaceuticals: a single genome is about 10GB in size, and scientists can work on hundreds or thousands of genomes at a time, sharing their findings across research facilities. BlueBee cut its data transfer times by 75% to deliver results more quickly and cost-effectively⁸.

Manufacturing: when manipulating 3D designs and sharing those simulations, Jabil can now transfer 124GB, spread across 3,400 files, over the public Internet in less than 5-hours⁹.

Oil and gas: from sharing seismic data for exploration or pipeline detection, the potential to scale out to utilities for fault fixing and prevention is compelling. Rosen has increased the transfer of its data by 300% across its 22 offices and research centres worldwide¹⁰.

Legal: transforming the eDiscovery and litigation support process, a law firm with more than 1,000 professionals across 12 offices globally experienced a 144% improvement in transfer speeds – now a 3GB file can be moved from the US to Japan in under 15 minutes¹¹.

IBM Aspera may be the answer

Our world will only get more data-driven and more connected, so the business case for more robust file sharing software will only get stronger. To get ahead and acquire the right tools to enable your modern workplace, drop us a message about trialing Aspera – either on-premise or in the cloud.

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