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Blog

From the Magnetic Drum to the Cloud - A Brief History of Data Storage

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...
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How to Achieve Fast Uploads to Cloud Storage

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...
Blog

A Day In Data: How Much Data We Generate and Consume in a Day

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...
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On-Premises and the Cloud: A Comparison of Two Unique Environments

On-premises. The cloud. Hybrid environments.As technology evolves and business needs grow, organizations are rapidly trying to make sense of their options. What are the benefits of running their software and data on-premises? What concerns should IT and security teams be aware of when implementing their processes in the cloud? Can they do a bit of both and go hybrid?There is no right or wrong...
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The GDPR is Coming… What’s it Mean to You?

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...
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Uploading Files Into Azure Blob Storage at Multi-Gigabit Speeds

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...
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5 Cloud Security Best Practices for Microsoft Azure

Migrating company data to the cloud is often a primary goal for modern organizations. In fact, by 2018, 60% of organizations’ IT infrastructure will be cloud-based, according to IDG’s Enterprise Cloud Computing Survey. Cloud infrastructure comes with many benefits, including—but not limited to—reducing IT budgets, improved data security, endless...
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7 Cloud Security Best Practices for Amazon Web Services

Temporary and permanent storage of data in the cloud has grown in popularity over the years. Companies like Land O’Lakes and Boeing moved their information to the cloud last year to simplify the technology they used. Video-streaming behemoth Netflix finished their journey to the cloud in early 2016 after seven years of moving systems and customer...
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A Reflection on NAB: Media Industry Trends, Challenges and How the Industry is Responding

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...
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TransferAgent Brings the Power of Filecatalyst to the Simplicity of a Web Browser

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...
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SSL and file transfers, the marriage of all marriages

The support team here at FileCatalyst team polled our customers who are using FileCatalyst Central v3.6 and asked what type of improvements they would like to see in our next release of Central. Security was a topic of interest to our customers, and they were asking us about the things we are doing in terms of security. With this in mind, we have taken steps with SSL that has secured our software...
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Moving Big Data in the Oil & Gas Industry

Did you know it takes over $100 million to drill a deep-water well? Holding true to the cliched phrase oil and gas companies know all too well: it takes money to make money. The deep digging associated with the oil and gas industry requires equally deep pockets. When it comes to making the big business decisions required in the oil and gas industry, major companies like Shell, BP, Chevron, BHP...
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How To: Change Emulation Mode in Internet Explorer to Load TransferAgent Properly

Any FileCatalyst application that previously used embedded Java applets in a browser has a migration path to FileCatalyst TransferAgent. Moving forward with this solution, we have been able to bring functionality of this product Google Chrome v42 and newer. Firefox v40 and newer. Internet Explorer v10 and newer. In Internet Explorer, users have found that the application “stalls” at...
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Bringing content to life with Aframe

If you’ve ever tried to send a large video file, you know what a time consuming process it can be. For the production pros using Aframe – the world’s most powerful video collaboration platform – they need to transfer thousands of videos every day. Imagine how long this would take using standard FTP. ...
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Picking up right where we left off with the 2016 Rio Olympic Games

Over the years, we have had the privilege of working with many customers and partners who have benefited from the FileCatalyst technology and this year, that privilege continues. Once again, NBC Sports and FileCatalyst join forces to deliver seamless coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. During the Games, NBC Olympics will utilize FileCatalyst technology to move data over a 5 Gbps link between...
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Teleportation, time travel and covered wagons

After the death of Leanord Nimoy this year, I found myself cruising the internet reading about him, about Star Trek, about sci-fi in general. I came across an article about teleportation that really caught my interest. This article pointed out that researchers had worked out how many bits of information were stored in a human being. It was an astounding 2.6 Tredecillion bits (that’s a number with...
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An introduction to data gravity

A couple of months ago, our President and Co-Founder John Tkaczewski had the honour of presenting an introduction to data gravity at the NAB virtual conference. While the concept of data gravity has been around for a few years, it isn’t talked about very often, especially in relation to our business – file transfer. Coined in 2010 by Dave McCrory, the basic concept of data gravity is that...
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Truly Secure On-Premises Document Management for HR

HR departments receive, generate, and accumulate substantial volumes of documents such as job postings, employment applications, resumes, reference checks, testing data, personnel files, wage and hour records, payroll records, and disciplinary files. GoDrive by GoAnywhere is a secure file storage and collaboration solution that's ideally...
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FileCatalyst: What does it do (part 3)

Think of the internet as garden hose. Now let’s say that this hose has a kink and the amount of water flowing through the hose is constricted. By bringing in acceleration technology, the kink is removed and now the flow can be as much as the hose can take. The diameter of the hose will be your bandwidth, the higher the diameter the more data we can push, but we can’t push anymore data than the...
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The effect of digital technology adoption in the oil and gas industry

A recent article by CIO UK points out how digital technology is rising exponentially in the oil and gas sector. From seismic imaging to e-learning, 80% of senior executives in the industry believe digital advancements have revolutionized how they work. The remaining 20% believe digital technology has had a tangible impact. No matter who you ask, it’s evident the adoption is positively affecting...