The year 2020 has shifted the oil and gas industry drastically. In the early months of the new year, COVID-19 resulted in price drops and a decrease in production. This, however, will not be a permanent situation. Now is the time to look at the horizon and what the next oil cycle will look like. This is a unique period of time that will define the future of oil and gas. Recently we have seen the...

Over the past ten years, the gaming industry has ballooned into one of the main producers of large data files. You blink and a new gaming system is released, with accessories, games and expansion packs. In 2015 it was announced at E3 that Nintendo would be releasing a remake of the beloved Final Fantasy 7 and since then the countdown has been on. This game is jam-packed with nostalgia for many...

The world can be an intimidating place, new battles consistently arise for the healthcare and life sciences industry. Research is the key to preventing and defeating these challenges. Often work is kept behind the scenes and the average person forgets how much data this industry creates and the importance this data holds. The files that the healthcare and life sciences industry produce could...

Whether you are purchasing the next trending iPhone or a powerful fast file transfer solution, support is always a bonus feature that provides you a team in your back corner. This sense of security takes a weight off of your shoulders because you know that assistance will be there to alleviate the stress that comes with updates, crashes, and more. Support is undervalued within the world of...

For good or for bad, the popular NetFlix television show, Black Mirror has global audiences overwhelmed with the future possibilities for technology. The show’s creators appear to have sought out the most extreme plotlines around technological threats, leaving us with digital nightmares. While Black Mirror mainly tackles the negative aspects of the potential advancement in technology, it does...

When it comes to the digital oilfield, High-Performance Computing (HPC) is an asset to be relied upon. From upstream discovery and the mapping of ocean floors to production, optimization and design; powerful HPC systems are analyzing, interpreting and manipulating unfathomable amounts of data.FileCatalyst has been helping a number of natural resources companies accelerate their workflows by moving...

HAL 9000 might be closer, more useful and friendlier than we think. Artificial Intelligence (AI) might not be here in a fully realized form yet, but it’s already disrupting a lot of industries that we work in.As our customers discuss, question and evaluate the ways they can leverage AI to help streamline their workflows, I thought that I’d share some of the ways industry leaders leverage AI across...

Since returning from IBC 2018, I have been thinking about IP-based workflows and the great discussions we had about this emerging trend at our booth. While IP-based workflows are seeing increased adoption and bringing new opportunities, there are also challenges ahead. IP-based workflows aren’t exactly new, but adoption has greatly increased in the media space as of late. Global companies with...

This year was another successful IBC for FileCatalyst, and we thank everyone who visited us. Our booth was bustling with activity; from people asking questions about how our fast file transfer solutions can fit in their workflow to people engaged with our in-depth demos that walked them through the user experience firsthand. Big thanks to every attendee that stopped by our booth, we are...

FileCatalyst World Speed Chart When we attend trade shows, like the IBC Show on the horizon, our FileCatalyst World Speed Chart always garners attention and starts conversations at our booth. The question people always ask about it is, “How?” And I can’t blame them. To take a file that would usually take five hours to transfer, and do it in 8.4...

I just finished reading an article by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee about the threats facing healthcare companies when it comes to FTP servers. I thought it would be a good idea to outline these threats, provide some thoughts, and outline some of the ways FileCatalyst addresses them. The State of FTP Servers The FBI has warned the healthcare sector that the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) can easily...

When it comes to healthcare, file transfers aren’t something to be left to Dropbox or FTP email attachments. The requirements are many; files must remain confidential, visible, and secure – every time. Achieving this is becoming ever more challenging as the sheer size and volume of file transfers grow with every year. I came across an interesting article titled “7 File Transfer Challenges of...

The Globus Toolkit has been an open source project since its inception, allowing the community to provide enhancements that have made it what it is today. But after a nearly 20-year run as what many see as the benchmark of grid computing, the Globus team at the University of Chicago will no longer support the Globus Toolkit. One of the toolkit’s...

In my earlier blog post, “A Day In Data: How Much Data We Generate and Consume in a Day” I examined the common data-related tasks and the amounts of data these tasks generate and consume in a day. When I finished my research, I was blown away by some of the figures I found. Did you know that 2.9 million emails are sent every second?! Or how about...

We see a lot of confusion among IT professionals about the pros/cons of cloud-based object storage like Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure Blob. There tends to be a general lack of awareness regarding the smaller players, like Backblaze B2 and Wasabi for instance, and their benefits. The most confusion, however, revolves around migrating data to these various cloud storage solutions, and how it can be...

I‘ve been thinking about the amount of data created and consumed in a single day, and it got me curious to look into the figures. I found the results very interesting – so I thought I would make an infographic to visualize my findings. I decided to focus on the more personal, everyday tasks most people perform in a day, such as emails and social...

There is a new wave of regulation coming in the form of the European Union Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR). These provisions and regulations have been in development over the last four years, and starting May 25th, 2018; it will begin to be enforced. After that date, substantial fines will be imposed on those who don’t comply with new regulations. Before we dive into what this will mean for...

Moving data into cloud storage can present a number of challenges for organizations across all industries. Some of these challenges include finding a tool that can simplify the process and a solution that can move the data to the cloud as fast as possible. This blog will examine two methods used to transfer files into Microsoft Azure Blob storage: using Microsoft’s tool AzCopy and using...

After getting back from the NAB show this year, I have been thinking about some of the media industry trends that present changes, as well as the opportunities. The industry as a whole has been in a state of change: the content itself is rapidly becoming larger, workflows are changing and becoming more dispersed, the way we archive media is changing...

I just finished watching a webinar our president, John Tkaczewski, gave on the new version 4.9.9 of FileCatalyst Workflow and it was a great learning experience. He gave an in-depth overview of TransferAgent and outlined its features past and new. It was really interesting stuff, so I thought I would write a blog article that outlines some of these new features. Consider this a supplementary piece...