MEDIA SHUTTLE - Signiantinfo.signiant.com/rs/134-QHZ-485/images/Shuttle Product White Paper... ·...

MEDIA SHUTTLE THE EASY WAY TO RELIABLY AND SECURELY

SEND ANY SIZE FILE, ANYWHERE, FAST.

PRODUCT WHITE PAPER

WHAT DO 100,000 GLOBAL USERS OF MEDIA SHUTTLE KNOW THAT YOU DON’T?

2 | MEDIA SHUTTLE PRODUCT WHITE PAPER | WWW.SIGNIANT.COM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Media Shuttle — The World’s First Hybrid SaaS File Movement Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Cloud Technology — The Enabler Powering Media Shuttle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Conventional File Movement Approaches — And Why They Don’t Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Growing Challenge of a Data-Driven World — Why You Need Media Shuttle . . . . . . . . . . 5

Signiant Intelligent File Movement — The First Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Scale-out Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Media Shuttle: Hybrid SaaS for “Hands-On” File Movement — The Second Revolution . . . . . 8

How Media Shuttle Works — The Technical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

IT Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Multi-layered Security — Defense in Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Media Shuttle in Action — The Operational Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Media Shuttle Economics — The Business Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Additional Media Shuttle Options — More Power, More Flexibility, More Cloud . . . . . . . . . . 15

Media Shuttle for Enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Media Shuttle with Cloud Object Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Web Transfer API for Embedded Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Who Should Use Media Shuttle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

About Signiant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

SEND ANY SIZE FILE,

ANYWHERE, FAST.

http://www.signiant.com



INTRODUCTIONThe information revolution, and the data explosion that has

accompanied it, has transformed the world — and in turn

increased the need for people to send and share digital information

across a now massively interconnected world . Businesses of every

size need to move ever more data, over ever greater distances,

at ever faster speeds . The parallel advances in computer storage,

networking, and processing have all enabled this transformation,

but a bottleneck has been left at the core of the standard transport

layer of this global digital ecosystem . The Internet Protocol (IP)

networks that carry the traffic aren’t being used optimally for

sending large data sets over long distances, and enterprises

needing to send large files quickly, easily, safely, and reliably face

an ongoing challenge .

This document presents a detailed review of how Signiant’s

Media Shuttle addresses this challenge for anyone who needs

to move large, high-value digital assets around the world . Media

Shuttle incorporates the speed, security and reliability of Signiant’s

industry-leading intelligent file movement technology, which moves

files up to 200 times faster than standard IP transfers, and delivers

these benefits via a unique, patented hybrid Software-as-a-Service

(SaaS) architecture . The Media Shuttle user interfaces and control

functions are delivered by Signiant from the cloud, while high-value,

proprietary content remains securely under the customer’s control

— either in on-premises storage or in the customer’s cloud storage

tenancy . This best-of-both-worlds approach offers numerous

benefits .

With its SaaS control layer, Media Shuttle is simple to deploy and

requires almost no customer maintenance . End users and system

administrators access Shuttle’s capabilities via a set of configurable

and easy to use role- and task-based web interfaces, all hosted

in the cloud by Signiant . Client-side software is always kept up

to date, new features and functions are pushed out on a regular

basis, and the customer doesn’t need to operate web servers .

This functionality is all available within an auto-scaling solution that

adapts to changing needs, and it is continuously available from

anywhere in the world . Media Shuttle’s built-in flexibility supports

diverse industries, use cases, operational workflows, and data

types .

At the center of the Media Shuttle value proposition is the end

user, the person who simply wants to send a big file, fast . Users

love Shuttle’s polished, branded web portals and super-simple

interface — and this keeps them coming back . When Media Shuttle

is available, the user community won’t gravitate to rogue file-sharing

tools that can put valuable data at risk .

Other stakeholders also benefit from this attention to user

experience . Signiant understands the importance of placing control

with the people who most need it, while offloading it from the people

who don’t . Media Shuttle enables a clear segregation between IT-

centric core technology policy and infrastructure management, and

the more dynamic operational administration of users, content flow

and access . Two different control interfaces meet the needs of these

two groups .

Further recognizing that one size really doesn’t fit all, Signiant sells

Media Shuttle on a subscription basis with tiered pricing based

on the number of active users . The same technical offering can

thus provide a cost-effective solution for any size customer, from a

boutique advertising agency or special effects house to a Fortune

The World’s First Hybrid SaaS File Movement Solution

FIGURE 1 . MEDIA SHUTTLE SEND PORTAL USER INTERFACE

HOW BIG IS A LARGE FILE? Signiant technology makes a meaningful difference for any single file over about 500MBytes . It also works for large sets of small files .




500 media or technology giant . Meeting the price-sensitive and

time-critical demands of the modern enterprise, Media Shuttle

removes the high up-front CAPEX investment, slow deployment

times and ongoing IT support and maintenance effort typical of a

major new technology implementation . Media Shuttle offers instead

a lower cost “pay-as-you-go” OPEX solution, a fully functional

deployment measured in weeks, not months (or years), and minimal

in-house IT maintenance and support requirements .

CLOUD TECHNOLOGY — THE ENABLER POWERING MEDIA SHUTTLEToday’s proliferation of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings makes it

easy to forget how unimaginable “the cloud” was even ten years

ago . On the infrastructure side, cloud computing and object

storage have enabled a radical rethinking of how data-heavy

computing tasks and storage requirements are managed . By

providing convenient, on-demand access to configurable pools

of shared resources, public cloud providers have created powerful

new options for data processing and storage . Today’s businesses

are able to take advantage of the cloud to reduce their upfront

infrastructure costs, for example building on-premises storage and/

or compute capacity for steady-state utilization levels, with overflow

to elastic cloud resources for peak demand .

While IaaS offerings from cloud providers present obvious

opportunities, today’s businesses are also deriving enormous

benefit from SaaS solutions that are built on public cloud platforms .

By employing PaaS tools and the global reach of cloud platforms,

companies like Signiant can develop and operate scalable software

platforms on behalf of their customers . SaaS solutions enable

enterprises to get their business-critical applications up and running

much faster . And with a greatly reduced technology maintenance

burden, IT professionals can focus on core business differentiation

and growth tasks . True SaaS solutions offer on-demand scaling,

making it possible to rapidly adapt resources to unpredictable and

changing business needs .

Media Shuttle is the first accelerated file movement solution to

leverage these advantages and offer a true native-formed SaaS

solution . Built from the ground up to take advantage of all that the cloud has to offer, true SaaS is designed to be hosted in the

cloud from the beginning . Via a multi-tenant architecture with

multiple levels of redundancy and resiliency, customers are given

a virtualized infrastructure that is maintained and managed by the

vendor . Customer IT departments never need to download and

install upgrades — or maintain outdated versions — since the

application is automatically upgraded via the cloud .

It is important to distinguish true SaaS from “cloud washed”

solutions, which simply take legacy on-premises software and run

it on virtual machines in the cloud . There are certainly situations

where this is a legitimate thing to do, but it isn’t SaaS . Only true

cloud-native SaaS solutions, like Media Shuttle, offer the benefits

of high availability, scalability, and global performance .

CONVENTIONAL FILE MOVEMENT APPROACHES — AND WHY THEY DON’T WORKTraditional methods of sending and sharing data over IP networks

rely on a networking protocol known as Transport Control Protocol

(TCP) . TCP — and the data communication protocols such as

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

that are built on it — works well for sending small files of any type

over the Internet . However, TCP does not deal well with the high

latency and packet loss of long-distance networks . The back-and-

forth acknowledgment mechanism that TCP is based on becomes

impractical for sending large amounts of data around the world .

The four-decade-old FTP is widely utilized for sending large files, but

it is built on the same TCP foundation and suffers from the same

limitations when latency is high . Additionally, at least in its popular

“free” forms, FTP fails to adequately address issues of ease of use,

security, and management . Commercial versions of FTP software

HIGH AVAILABILITY

COST EFFECTIVENESS

SCALABILITY

IS IT TRUE CLOUD-NATIVE SAAS?LOOK FOR THESE KEY BENEFITS

EASY TO DEPLOY & USE

GLOBAL PERFORMANCE

RAPID INNOVATION

CLOUD TERMS

INFRASTRUCTURE-AS-A-SERVICE (IAAS) refers to hosted storage, servers (virtual machines) and networking

PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE (PAAS) offerings are cloud-hosted tools that can be leveraged to build something; examples included database, email service, and DNS

SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE (SAAS) offerings are complete software applications delivered by the software vendor from the cloud




attempt to address these latter issues, but do so through more

costly, complicated, and hard to deploy and support solutions . Such

solutions add to the learning curve for users and to the workload of

IT staff, while doing nothing to address the core issue of latency .

A common approach to solving the throughput problem — one

based on widespread misconceptions and misleading claims by

network providers — is to purchase more bandwidth . But this

approach fails to address the underlying limitation of TCP that

results in extremely inefficient usage of increased bandwidth in

high-latency scenarios . In fact, more bandwidth makes literally

no difference in many practical situations: above a minimum

bandwidth-latency product threshold in the presence of packet

loss, TCP throughput is a linear function of latency and is

completely independent of bandwidth . So it is quite likely that the

transfer time for a given file will be exactly the same over the higher-

bandwidth connection . In short, simply buying more bandwidth can

be the very definition of throwing good money after bad .

The more recently introduced online file sharing (OFS) and

enterprise file share & sync (EFSS) services leverage cloud

technology, and have been embraced by consumers largely

because they deal well with the issue of usability . But these

services still rely on TCP, thereby incurring the same slow delivery

problems with large files . And many of these services, which are

optimized for document sharing, place file size limits on users .

Such solutions also introduce major security, control, support, and

manageability issues inside the enterprise, often violating company

policies by placing proprietary business data outside of corporate

controls and visibility . For this reason, corporate IT departments

increasingly ban use of such services . So, at best, these solutions

simply create more challenges for an already overworked IT staff as

they attempt to reconcile user requirements with the imperative to

protect the organization’s valuable data .

THE GROWING CHALLENGE OF A DATA-DRIVEN WORLD —WHY YOU NEED MEDIA SHUTTLEWith their data-heavy video files and distributed content supply

chains, Media & Entertainment companies were among the first to

address the challenge of transferring large files over long distances .

And video isn’t just for media companies anymore . Technological

advances and the accessibility of video creation tools have led to

the ubiquity of video as a preferred medium for communications

of all kinds, across all industries . With the move to HD, then to 4k

video and beyond, video files continue to get bigger . Whether for

training, marketing, or employee communications, most companies

now use video and also face the challenge of moving it .

Alongside the video explosion, the large-file-movement problem

has grown to encompass other classes of unstructured data

(data not organized into relational databases), beyond just

video . Technological drivers have led to a proliferation of large

unstructured data types — from earth science and medical data,

satellite imagery and maps, to business “big data” of all kinds . The

emergence of massively scalable cloud-based object storage and

big data applications such as Hadoop MapReduce also add to this

exponential data growth .

The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that by 2020 the

size of world’s digital data will be nearly 40 Zetabytes, a 50-fold

growth from the beginning of 2010 . Most of this new content

(up to 95%) will be unstructured data . Moreover, this growth is

asymmetrical, with large files disproportionately accounting for

growing data storage needs . According to a 2015 study by Nasuni

Corporation of enterprises utilizing cloud storage, while large files

(over 1GB) represent only 0 .1% of the total number of files stored,

they represent 27% of the total storage used .

Three other trends compound the challenge of data growth:

tightening deadlines and the need for speed in a competitive world;

increasing globalization and the need to move and share ever

more data across ever greater distances; and growing cybercrime

and the need for robust data security, at all points in its lifecycle,

including during transit .

Traditional methods of file movement cannot meet the challenge of

sending large files easily, reliably and securely over distance, and

these critical shortcomings are becoming much more of a core

business problem . What is needed is a radically different approach;

the kind offered by Signiant’s revolutionary Media Shuttle .

NETWORK TERMS

BANDWIDTH is the maximum rate that data can be transfered (typically measured in bits/second)

THROUGHPUT is the actual rate that data is transfered

LATENCY is the delay between a data sender and receiver; latency is impacted by both distance and processing time at any nodes the data transverses




18 HRS

12 HRS

6 HRS

FIGURE 3 . TIME TO TRANSFER 1 HR OF HD CONTENT (ENCODED @50 Mbps AVC-21GB)

100 Mbps

TCP Signiant

LA Metro 1:28 0:32LA to NY 5:38 0:32LA to London 10:59 0:32LA to Singapore 21:05 0:32

TCP SIGNIANT

500 Mbps

TCP Signiant


TCP SIGNIANT

1 GBPS

TCP Signiant


TCP SIGNIANT

Signiant Intelligent File Movement — The First RevolutionMedia Shuttle is built on the same powerful technology platform as

all Signiant products; a platform that companies like Disney, Fox,

the NFL, and many others rely on to securely move their files . The

combined technological features of this platform enable any size file

of any type to be sent over any distance quickly, reliably and securely .

ACCELERATIONSigniant’s proprietary acceleration protocol transfers files up to

200x faster than standard TCP-based transmission . It does this

by minimizing the impact of latency so that the entire bandwidth of

the connection can be fully utilized . Signiant technology therefore

has the greatest impact for a high-bandwidth, high-latency (long

distance) connection — as shown in the figure 2 (below) in green .

Another way of visualizing the performance improvement is

to compare Signiant transfers with TCP transfers over various

distances, and to then repeat this comparison for different

bandwidth connections . As shown below, with TCP the file transfer

takes proportionally longer as distance/latency increases and

packet loss occurs . With Signiant, not only is the transfer time much

shorter, it’s also independent of distance — and as more bandwidth

is added the Signiant transfer time gets proportionally faster .

Signiant achieves this performance by utilizing a proprietary transport

protocol deployed on top of UDP (User Datagram Protocol) that

enhances it in significant ways . UDP enables chunks of data to be

sent on a best-effort basis that removes the TCP overhead of back-

and-forth handshaking between the two ends of the IP transmission

path — but it does so by foregoing reliability . The Signiant protocol

implements functionality on top of UDP that restores reliability in a

TCP-like way, but with the following improvements:

➜➜ Flow control ensures that data is transmitted at the optimal rate for the receiver .

➜➜ Congestion control detects when the network is being overloaded and adapts accordingly .

➜➜ Reliability mechanisms make sure that data loss due to congestion or other network factors is compensated for and that the order of the stream of data is maintained .

One fundamental problem with TCP is that it uses a relatively

unsophisticated sliding window mechanism, sending only a certain

amount of data over the network before it expects that data to be

acknowledged as received . As TCP receives acknowledgments,

it advances its window and sends more data . If the data doesn’t

get through or an acknowledgment is lost, TCP will time out and

retransmit from the last acknowledged point in the data stream with

a reduced window size . There are a number of problems with this,

such as retransmitting data that may have already been received,

or long stalls in data sent while waiting on acknowledgments .

Signiant uses a mechanism similar to a sliding window, but the

mechanism incorporates two key improvements over traditional

TCP: adaptive window size and selective acknowledgment . Adaptive

window size is a mechanism that measures the capacity of the

network and the round trip distance . It then uses a window that’s

big enough to keep data in flight on the network at all the times .

Selective acknowledgment allows the endpoint to verify which

pieces of the transmission have been received so that any section

that is missing — even one in the middle of the data set — can be

retransmitted rather than the entire data set .

FIGURE 2 . SIGNIANT VS. TCP-BASED TRANSMISSIONS

0

50 Mb 1 GB 20 GB

6

TR

AN

SF

ER

TIM

E (

HR

S) 12

DATA PAYLOAD

UP TO 200X FASTER

GREEN = 1 GBPS LINK LA TO SINGAPOREBLUE = 100 Mbps LINK LA TO NY

No Signiant

No Signiant

SigniantSigniant




Signiant is constantly measuring effective throughput, network

latency and loss, and building a history . By maintaining a history, it

is possible to see how all of these factors are changing over time,

and network congestion can be located by analyzing the frequency

of changes . This allows the Signiant protocol to adapt to network

conditions much more effectively than TCP, which employs pure

additive-increase/multiplicative-decrease window size changes in

response to point-in-time packet loss .

In addition to advanced TCP-like functions, Signiant’s transfer

protocol also adds enhanced FTP-like functions to the UDP

foundation . With FTP each file sent requires its own set of

command and response interactions, and its own TCP connection .

The Signiant protocol reduces this high per-file overhead by

communicating about files being transferred more efficiently, and

multiplexing the transmission of files over a single channel, thereby

enabling file operations to be performed in parallel .

Signiant’s transport functionality operates under a client-server

model, where one or more clients request services from a central

server . In order to execute the file transfer itself, both the source

and destination computers must have an instance of the Signiant

software that implements the proprietary protocol for data

movement .

RELIABILITYIn addition to the various protocol-level reliability mechanisms noted

in the prior section, Signiant includes a feature called Checkpoint

Restart in all of its products . Checkpoint Restart adds a layer of fault

tolerance into any transfer by ensuring that if a transfer is interrupted

for any reason (from network failure to application or OS crashes)

the transmission will automatically restart after recovery from the

point at which it was interrupted, with no loss of data . This adds not

only reliability but also efficiency to the overall transfer process by

avoiding the need to start at the beginning again after a failure .

SECURITYTransport Layer Security (TLS) is built in as a core component of

the Signiant transfer protocol software stack and provides the

base layer of security in all Signiant tools . TLS is the standard

cryptographic protocol designed to provide communication security,

privacy and data integrity over IP networks . Encryption mechanisms

provided by TLS are used to secure data as it is transmitted with

regards to data transfer, advanced authentication, data integrity,

and data confidentiality . All transfers conducted through the Signiant

transfer protocol are encrypted, appropriately authenticated,

authorized and tracked, including proof that files were delivered

thereby ensuring non-repudiation (protection against denial of

performing an action) . Additional layers of service and application

security are added to the individual Signiant products on the

management, control and end-user components specific to each .

SCALE-OUT MANAGEMENTWhile there are other products on the market that accelerate

file transfers, only Signiant solutions are designed to operate

at scale . By developing systems that include unified control,

automation, and bandwidth management capabilities, Signiant

made it practical to manage very large numbers of endpoints and

transfers . Signiant’s flagship Manager+Agents product led the way

in scale-out management, and remains the gold standard today

for scheduled, unattended delivery of large data sets . The following

Manager+Agents system elements enable large-scale deployments:

➜➜ Control & Monitoring Console: Signiant systems provide a dashboard that allows IT to monitor and manage all file transfer activity on a global network .

➜➜ Centralized Configuration: As systems scale up, it becomes impractical to separately configure a large number of file transfer endpoints . The Manager+Agents system is based on a central policy engine and database, allowing configuration parameters to be automatically propagated to each endpoint .

➜➜ Workflow Automation: Signiant was the leader in developing reusable components and templates for automation of file transfer workflows and integration with other system compo-nents . As the media industry has moved to a standards-based approach to workflow automation, Signiant has played an active role in the Framework for Interoperable Media Services (FIMS) initiative of AMWA and the EBU to standardize service interfaces .

➜➜ Bandwidth Management: The Manager+Agents product includes adjustable settings for WAN acceleration and bandwidth ranges based on upper limit ceilings and lower limit floors . These tools facilitate predictable transfer times and prevent overloading of the network . Administrators also have the ability to prioritize delivery of assets based on business needs and content delivery windows . As content priorities change, the queue can be adjusted to move more critical jobs to the top, while jobs with less urgent timelines remain lower in the queue .

While not all of this advanced functionality is included in the Media

Shuttle solution, Signiant’s legacy of building highly sophisticated

enterprise systems has informed its design . And it is important to

note that many Signiant customers employ both solutions within

their businesses: Manager+Agents for automated system-to-system

transfers, and Media Shuttle when people are involved .

FIGURE 4 . CLIENT/SERVER ARCHITECTURE

CLIENTSERVER

FILE TRANSFER SOFTWARE

FILE TRANSFER SOFTWARE

File movement

Request

Respond




Signiant’s first-generation products laid a strong technical

foundation and established the company as the market leader

in advanced movement of large data sets . But an important and

growing group of stakeholders wanted something more: end users

desired an easy-to-use interface reminiscent of online file-sharing

services, combined with the power of Signiant technology . This

market need, combined with the advent of cloud technology, led to

the development of Media Shuttle — Signiant’s flagship product for

“hands-on” file movement, as opposed to automated and batch file

movements better supported by the Manager+Agents and Flight

products . “Hands-on” file movement is shorthand here for any

person-to-person, or project-based, sending and sharing of files .

From an end user perspective, Media Shuttle is a simple tool

accessed by opening a browser and going to a defined URL . The

user is presented with a branded portal with an intuitive interface,

in one of three forms:

➜➜ SEND (as shown in Figure 1) portals let the user send a file to another person in a store-&-forward model . Email notifications advise the recipient when a file is ready for download, and advise the sender (and other stakeholders) when the file has been downloaded .

➜➜ SHARE (as shown in Figure 6) portals allow multiple users to browse, upload to, and download from a file structure in a fixed storage location .

➜➜ SUBMIT portals funnel all user submissions to a fixed storage location, for simple aggregation purposes and/or to be picked up by an automated process .

Media Shuttle is completely agnostic with respect to data type, file

size, network type, distance of transfer, and geographic location .

Running on the customers’ existing WAN infrastructure, whether

dedicated links or open Internet, Media Shuttle will always provide

the same maximum possible speeds enabled by the Signiant

transfer protocol, regardless of network conditions .

Most organizations comprise different classes of stakeholders with

different needs and concerns . Media Shuttle provides a solution

that offers features and benefits for all: IT staff responsible for

provisioning, supporting and securing the technical environment;

operational managers and end-users performing the bulk of the

actual data-centric work; and business decision-makers defining

organizational objectives and needs .

HOW MEDIA SHUTTLE WORKS — THE TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVESystem Architecture Media Shuttle incorporates the same acceleration, reliability and

security technology as all Signiant products, delivered as a hybrid

SaaS — meaning that part of the system is on-premises, and part

is delivered by Signiant from the cloud . This contemporary new

architecture extends and enhances the core transport functionality

to create an easy to use, simple to deploy solution for people to

send and share large (or any size) files .

A Media Shuttle deployment is shown in Figure 5 . At the core of

the system are a server (running Signiant software) and storage

Media Shuttle: Hybrid SaaS for “Hands-On” File Movement — The Second Revolution

CLOUD

ON-PREMISES/ CUSTOMER NETWORK

• WEB INTERFACE • EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS• CLIENT UPDATES• FILE TRANSFER LOGISTICS• DATA COLLECTION

END USEREND USEROPS/ADMINIT

INTERNET (OR CUSTOMER NETWORK)

FIGURE 5 . MEDIA SHUTTLE HYBRID SaaS ARCHITECTURE

CUSTOMER’S ON-PREMISES STORAGE

CUSTOMER’S SERVER

RUNNING SIGNIANT FILE

TRANSFER SOFTWARE

SIGNIANT CONTROLLAYER SaaS




on the customer’s network . This storage is the repository for data

that users want to share, and/or the place where data is cached in

a store-and-forward model for a person-to-person transfer . This is

an important aspect of Signiant’s differentiated value — the data is

in a storage location that is always under the customer’s direct

control . (Yes, this storage can be in the cloud . More on that later

on page 16 .)

The SaaS part of the architecture, which is shown in blue in Figure 5,

is where file transfer logistics are managed, user activity is tracked,

and user web interfaces are hosted . It is a fully managed solution

where Signiant administers all the backend technical tasks such as

load balancing, web server management, and software upgrades .

This SaaS component orchestrates the entire system via Internet

connections and provides the web interfaces that enable people

to interact with it, as indicated by the blue lines on the diagram .

To send or share files, end users interact with the system through

simple branded portals that are accessed via a web browser . As

discussed on page 7, each end user’s laptop or desktop computer

must be equipped with client-side file transfer software to handle

the data movement . This software, known as the Signiant App,

is provided as a native Windows or Mac OS desktop application

that requires a straightforward one-time installation on the user’s

machine . Once the App software is in place, the user can simply

access a Media Shuttle portal via a web page provided by the

Signiant SaaS — and start sending and sharing files . As shown by

the green lines on the diagram, data is moved between the client

and server storage locations via the associated computers running

Signiant file transfer software . The file transfer client is also available

as an iOS app for mobile devices available from the Apple App Store .

Media Shuttle management interfaces (both IT and Ops/Admin)

are provided as web pages, hosted by web servers provided and

managed by Signiant as part of the Media Shuttle SaaS . These

interfaces are accessed through standard web browsers (Chrome,

Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Internet Explorer) and provide for the set-

up, configuration and administration of portals . The management

consoles are pure web interfaces requiring no plug-ins or native

applications .

Taking a big-picture view of the system, the green and gray parts

of the Figure 5, where the data movement itself is happening, can

be referred to as the ‘data plane’ . The Signiant SaaS is the ‘control

plane’, orchestrating the entire system . This separation of the data

plane from the control plane is one of the key technical innovations

of Media Shuttle, allowing customers to retain control of their

content while simultaneously benefiting from the power of SaaS .

IT Considerations Media Shuttle is a fully enterprise-ready solution that is used by

some of the world’s largest corporations to handle their most

valuable content . But the hybrid SaaS architecture and affordable

price point also make it accessible to very small companies . In

both scenarios, the concerns of the IT professionals responsible

for overseeing the system were carefully considered and the system

is optimized for their needs .

A key concept for all Signiant products is the principle of “storage

independence” . Customers have the freedom and flexibility to select

any storage type and location, on-premises or in the cloud, from the

storage vendor(s) of their choice . One immediate IT benefit of this

design is that Media Shuttle can be deployed without the need to

modify, replace or add to the existing enterprise infrastructure . The

only customer hardware requirement, beyond access to the storage

and correct network and firewall configuration, is a server on which

to install the transfer software . If more throughput or system

redundancy is required, or if storage is geographically distributed,

additional servers can be installed — and Signiant provides the

additional server software free of charge .

Installation and set-up of the server software is done remotely by

the Signiant deployment team, working with the customer’s IT staff .

During the initial set-up session, the Signiant team can also assist

with configuration of the customer’s network router to support Port

Forwarding, and configuration of the required ports for outbound

and inbound traffic . Once the server and client software is installed,

all that IT staff need to do is create and baseline configure the

user-facing portals from within the IT web interface — a process

that can be done in minutes . Portals can be one of three types:

Send portals for person-to-person sending of files to one or more

sender-selected, named individuals; Submit portals for multiple

users submitting files to pre-defined folders; and Share portals for

multiple users uploading/downloading files to/from pre-defined

storage folders configured for shared access . A typical Media

Shuttle system is installed, fully deployed and in use by operational

staff within days of signing a contract .

BROWSER PLUG-INS

Signiant’s client-side file transfer software was traditionally delivered

to end users via a downloadable web browser NPAPI plug-in that

extended browser functionality to include accelerated file transfers.

As Google Chrome and other web browsers withdrew support for

NPAPI-plug-ins, Signiant migrated the file transfer functionality to

a native application, the Signiant App. The browser interface now

communicates with the installed app, and from the end-user

perspective there is no difference in the file transfer experience.




FIGURE 6: MEDIA SHUTTLE SHARE PORTAL USER INTERFACE

Once the system is up and running, IT staff receive the full benefits

of a multi-tenant SaaS solution: it is fully maintained and supported

by Signiant, automatically upgraded with no downtime, and steadily

delivers innovative new features . As a multi-tenant SaaS, Media

Shuttle provides the scalability (more users and more transfers),

elasticity (immediately auto-scale up and down as needed) and

high availability (guaranteed performance at any scale) of a true

cloud platform .

In addition to ease of deployment, support and maintenance,

Media Shuttle offers a number of other benefits to customer IT staff:

➜➜ Control and Visibility: Media Shuttle provides three different user interfaces for three different classes of users: an IT interface for IT users, an Administration (or Ops/Admin) interface for Operations Managers, and a User interface for end-users that instantiates one of the three classes of portal supported (Send, Submit and Share) .

The IT interface allows the technical administrator to create new user-facing portals, define, configure and manage all aspects of the storage and network infrastructure, set limits on file sizes and the lifespan of user portals, and apply whatever other constraints and controls are needed . More advanced settings allow for sophisticated control over areas such as traffic routing, server load balancing, and permissions for working with non-members of a portal . The Administration (Ops/Admin) interface is a dashboard that gives full visibility over the usage of the portal (members, number of files transferred over time, largest files transferred, etc .) . Additional capabilities allow for viewing and exporting (as .csv files) all portal events and transactions, including the full history of which files were transferred, when and by whom .

➜➜ Delegated Administration: Delegated administration is a concept that benefits IT staff and operations managers equally . From within the IT interface, IT staff can delegate full administration rights over a portal to another user — typically an operations manager or project manager . Via the separate streamlined Ops/Admin interface, this designated manager can then add and remove users, monitor content flow, and change the portal design . This model ensures that IT retains control of key network and storage parameters, but absolves them of the need to spend time reconfiguring portals based on what are essentially non-technical, operational decisions . IT is freed up to focus on core technical tasks, while operational staff can make real-time operating decisions without needing to wait for IT to execute on their requests .

➜➜ Centralized Solution: Another major IT benefit of Media Shuttle is that it enables organizations to consolidate all their file transfers within a singe solution; all transfer activity and users can be monitored, managed and controlled from a single place . Centralizing on Media Shuttle radically reduces technological sprawl within the enterprise, and eliminates all the associated support and control issues that result from alternative file transfer solutions such as FTP or OFS/EFSS .

➜➜ FTP Augmentation: Many organizations rely heavily on FTP, and have dedicated resources to implementing FTP servers for sharing content . Media Shuttle can be installed alongside an existing FTP system and can share the same folders and file systems . By adding these storage locations during installation, users can gain the power and simple interfaces of Media Shuttle, and managers can gain enhanced visibility and insight into their data transfer activity, all without the need to migrate content or change existing content workflows .




Multi-layered Security — Defense in Depth

Building on the core Transport Layer Security (TLS) built into

the Signiant transfer protocol, Media Shuttle contains a variety

of security features that adhere to the information assurance

principle of “defense in depth” . A defense-in-depth design strategy

incorporates several security controls for a system so that multiple

security failures must occur before an attacker can gain access

to critical resources . Two key components of this strategy are

the principles of “least privilege” and “secure by default” . Least

privilege works on the basis that every task in the system should be

performed with the least privileges possible both in terms of scope

of resources and duration of time that resources can be accessed .

A corollary of least privilege is that mechanisms used to control

access to resources should never be shared . A system is secure by

default when the default settings put the system in a secure state,

ensuring that overt action must be taken to disable security features .

Using these basic principles, Media Shuttle has been designed with

five key security features:

➜➜ Storage Control: The first Media Shuttle security element is provided by the hybrid SaaS nature of Media Shuttle: customers can store their files on-premises or in the cloud, while the software that orchestrates the file movement is a true cloud-native SaaS offering . The content storage itself is always under the customer’s control . This eliminates the security risk of popular consumer online file sharing services, since customer files are never stored in the same file system or cloud storage tenancy as other people’s files . The advantages of segregated storage are numerous, but from a security perspective it provides an extra layer of containerization .

➜➜ Secure Cloud Communications: The second key security feature begins with the creation of a customer account and assignment of top-level administrators for the account . The next step is to set up and associate file transfer servers with the account . Each transfer server installation securely binds with the cloud tier and the customer account using a one-time setup key generated by the cloud tier for this purpose . This one-time key is used to securely establish and exchange security credentials, which are then used to validate and encrypt all future communication between the cloud and the transfer server .

➜➜ Storage Configuration: Once transfer servers are registered with an account, the administrator can create new portals that allow communities of users to securely exchange files . Each portal is associated with a specific area of storage visible to a transfer server or visible to a set of redundant transfer servers . ‘Share’ portals are configured so that portal users can browse the associated storage . With ‘Send’ portals, users have no storage visibility and only utilize the associated storage as a transient cache during a transfer . ‘Share’ portals also obscure the single defined storage location from the users . This ability to assign and manage specific storage locations for each portal adds a third element of security .

➜➜ Secure User Credentials & Web Communications: User interactions with the Media Shuttle system are also highly secure . When users log in to a portal using their username and password, all web interactions utilize standard TLS to authenticate the server and encrypt information exchanged between the browser and the server . For users managed exclusively in Media Shuttle, passwords are stored using secure salted one-way hashes . Passwords are not stored in clear text and what is stored can only be used to determine if a password provided by a user is correct . Passwords provided by users are tested by applying a hashing process and comparing the result to the stored value . The salt is random data that is included in the hash to prevent brute force dictionary attacks on the password database in the unlikely event of a breach .

➜➜ File Transfer Controls. A final element of security derives from Shuttle’s file transfer mechanics . When a user initiates a file transfer via the cloud-served web interface, or a transfer is initiated by an unattended sync operation, transfer instructions must be generated for, and delivered to, the transfer client . These transfer instructions include a unique transfer security token and are delivered via secure web communications . The transfer client then connects to the transfer server and delivers the transfer instructions . The transfer server validates the transfer instructions by contacting the Signiant control plane SaaS with the transfer instructions including the transfer token . This round trip check ensures that transfers are authorized and valid at the time of transfer and are fully tracked by the Signiant SaaS .

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The performance of Signiant products is based on years of accumulated knowledge about how networks perform in all kinds of real-life scenarios . The company’s R&D efforts have yielded fundamental innovations in solving the problems associated with long-distance file transfer . Signiant holds four patents related to transport technology, with two additional patents (and one pending) relating to architectural innovations in the cloud .

TELEVISION PROGRAMS | USE CASE SNAPSHOT

Media and Entertainment companies use Media Shuttle to receive TV programs from content producers and send them to distribution partners around the world.




MEDIA SHUTTLE IN ACTION — THE OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVEFor most medium-sized and large organizations, operational staff

fall into two basic role categories: managers and true end-users .

Media Shuttle provides easy to use, intuitive interfaces that support

the key tasks and responsibilities for both roles .

For managers, the Administration interface (also referred to as the

Ops/Admin interface) is the primary means of interacting with Media

Shuttle . Here managers can not only view all the transfer and user

activity for the portals for which IT delegated them administration

rights, but also perform other useful tasks . They can add and delete

users (for example as project teams change over time), define user

rights for folders, and set up email notification rules for content

uploads, downloads and transfer failures . Additionally, once IT has

created a portal and defined it as a Send, Submit or Share site,

managers can, with just a few clicks, brand and customize the

portal by defining logos, backgrounds, color schemes, language

(currently English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese),

and shortcut icon .

For end users, the Media Shuttle experience is simple and

‘consumerized’ . Once they have received the auto-generated

email notification inviting them as a member, end users install the

simple application at the initial prompt and log in with their email

address and password . In a Share portal, the user can select the

file(s) and/or folder(s) they wish to upload/download/view, and click

the appropriate action button . In a Send portal, sending files is

simply a matter of choosing the file(s)/folder(s) to send, adding the

email address(es) of the recipient(s), adding an optional message,

and clicking “Send” . Automatic email notifications allow senders

(and managers, and other interested parties defined by the portal

administrator) to see that the files they sent were successfully

transferred, received, and downloaded . Similarly, recipients receive

email notifications containing a portal link to the file(s), which they

can then view and selectively download to a destination of their

choice . For Submit portals the send process is even simpler; since

no recipients are defined, users just need to select the content

for uploading, optionally add a message, and send . Interested

parties defined for the Submit portal then receive automatic email

notifications that new content has arrived .

In addition to the core advantages of speed, reliability, and security,

Media Shuttle offers a number of other benefits to operational staff:

➜➜ Ease of Use: From an end-user perspective, Media Shuttle portals look and feel much like the standard consumer-grade online file sharing services that most people are now familiar with . The interfaces and tasks they enable are so simple to learn and intuitive to use that zero user training is required . As hands-on personnel come and go within the organization, there is no overhead associated with onboarding them with this essential tool .

From a manager perspective, configuring and branding portals is quick, easy, and intuitive, as is managing user access as project needs and staffing evolve over time . Once portals have been

FIGURE 7 . MEDIA SHUTTLE OPS/ADMIN INTERFACE




created and delegated by IT, operational managers are able to make the kinds of on-the-fly changes that today’s fast-paced organizations require .

➜➜ Flexible Workflow Support: Between them, the Send, Submit and Share portals support all standard workflows involving person-initiated file transfer operations . From person-to-person and person-to-people content movements (Send), to aggregating content from diverse sources to a single location (Submit), and supporting dynamic project-based collaboration involving content from multiple sources that is to be shared by multiple users (Share), Media Shuttle provides a solution for easily, reliably, and securely moving large files across any distance .

All three portals enable additional workflow flexibility unique to that type of portal . Authenticated Send portals can be configured to allow authenticated members to send content to non-members without requiring the latter to authenticate prior to download, and to invite non-members to join . These options extend the reach of the portal to the wider supply chain . Submit portals are perfect for situations where aggregated content needs downstream processing . By simply pointing a workflow automation engine (such as that provided by Signiant’s Manager+Agents on-premises solution) at a Submit folder, newly arriving content can be automatically processed as it arrives through the portal . Share portals enable not only collaborative access to content added via Media Shuttle, but also shared access to any content placed on the share location by any other transfer mechanism, such as FTP .

The Media Shuttle iOS app extends this flexible workflow support to remote users working in time-sensitive situations out in the field . With the Media Shuttle iOS app, users working on tasks such as covering live events or breaking news can send content to Submit portals directly from their iPhone or iPad with the full power of the core underlying transport technology .

➜➜ Unlimited Portals: Since all Media Shuttle portals are hosted by Signiant in the cloud, there is no practical limit to the number of portals that can be created and supported, always with the same global performance, security, reliability and responsiveness . Signiant extends this capability out to customers by allowing them to create as many individually branded portals as they like, at no additional cost . So whether the customer is a global organization spread across multiple discrete locations, a major content aggregator or content processor with multiple clients or partners, or a single entity conducting multiple distinct projects in parallel, Media Shuttle enables the provisioning of as many portals as are required for as long as they are needed . In situations where end-users are enrolled as members of multiple portals, they just choose which portal they wish to enter at login .

MEDIA SHUTTLE ECONOMICS — THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVEFor the business process owner concerned with budgets and

expenditures, Media Shuttle offers particular advantages not found

with competing solutions . The SaaS model has intrinsic advantages

that are well aligned with the realities of today’s dynamic

business world, and Signiant has developed a unique pricing

model to further accommodate customer needs . The following

considerations will be of interest to business stakeholders:

➜➜ Lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Media Shuttle is sold as an annual subscription, thereby requiring much less upfront CAPEX than purchase of perpetual license software . Savvy customers realize that this also means they can adopt a “buy it to try it” approach . Rather than undertaking the costly and time-consuming analysis that major capital investments demand, they simply buy a subscription, deploy it, and see if it adds value . As a hybrid SaaS solution, Media Shuttle also provides customers with a significant reduction in ongoing software maintenance costs . The time and energy that IT staff must spend to upgrade and maintain on-premises software can be hard to quantify, but it is very real . This combination of SaaS-related economic benefits ensures that customers are purchasing an industrial-strength file movement solution with the lowest possible total cost of ownership .

➜➜ Pricing Based on Active Users: Pricing for standard hybrid SaaS Media Shuttle deployments is based solely on the number of active users . An active user is defined as any person (defined by email address) who sends at least one file, or receives three or more files, in a given month . Customer costs are independent of bandwidth, file size, total amount of files transferred, number of portals provided or locations supported, or any other variable . (As discussed on page 17, cloud storage deployments can incur overages for high data volumes .)

VIDEO CREATION | USE CASE SNAPSHOT

Creative collaborators use Media Shuttle to move video content around the world for editing, special effects, and localization.




It is important to note that different people can consume the active user subscription every month . Unlike a ‘named user’ model where each person who uses the service needs an annual subscription, this floating license model is optimized for dynamic business environments . Customers typically have many people, both inside and outside their companies, enrolled as members of their portals — and there is no incremental charge as long as the number of people actively using the system during the billing period is within the subscription user count .

This unique pricing model allows for significant organizational flexibility in how customers use the system . Whether it is the same users every month throughout the duration of the subscription, or the active users change every month, is completely in the customer’s hands . Since there is no charge for adding inactive members, Media Shuttle allows for advanced planning and increased business agility — inactive members can become active users simply by using the system . Moreover, unlike solutions that price based on bandwidth utilization, the floating license model ensures that users will never find their transfers slowed down simply because they have exceeded their plan’s bandwidth allowance . Recognizing that it is not always easy at the outset to predict actual usage needs, Signiant will work with customers in the first year to find the subscription tier most appropriate for that organization .

➜➜ Tiered Pricing: Media Shuttle licenses are sold in annual subscription blocks of users priced and packaged as tiers (with ten users the base tier) . The higher the tier licensed (and hence the number of users), the lower the price per user . Customers select the tier most appropriate for their organization and thereby fix their annual OPEX for the solution . In the event that

actual usage exceeds the tier purchased, customers can switch to a higher tier, and gain the lower rates, at any time during the contract . Additionally, periods of unusually high demand for the solution require no action on the client side . The additional usage will simply be added and charged on the next billing cycle at the current rate for the tier purchased, thereby enabling seamless scaling for the customer .

➜➜ Monthly Statements: As a SaaS, all Media Shuttle file and user activity is managed and tracked on the Signiant-administered control layer in the cloud . Billing is automated based on this activity and sent to the client as a monthly statement detailing the number of licenses purchased, the active users in that month, and any billable overage for the period . The billing statement makes it easy for customers to analyze on a month-to-month basis the number of active users, and determine whether or not they need to change their subscription tier .

ACTIVE USERS FLOATING LICENSE

➜➜ All 25 people are members of portals

➜➜ Customers pay only for 15 active users;

may be different people each month

➜➜ An active user is someone who sends

at least one file or receives three or

more files in a given month

➜➜ No charge and no limits on members

MONTH 1

MONTH 2

ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING | USE CASE SNAPSHOT

Architects and designers use Media Shuttle to exchange drawings for collaboration, bid processes, and construction.




Additional Media Shuttle Options — More Power, More Flexibility, More CloudFor organizations with more advanced needs, or requiring features

and capabilities beyond the standard Media Shuttle version,

Signiant offers several variations .

MEDIA SHUTTLE ENTERPRISESigniant offers an Enterprise version of Media Shuttle that adds

features typically of interest to larger companies:

➜➜ Auto Delivery: As Media Shuttle is rolled out across the enterprise, use cases often emerge for unattended delivery . It may be possible to gain efficiencies by eliminating the need to manually check for new content, or by streamlining distribution of the same content to multiple partners . The Auto Delivery feature provides this capability via the native Signiant App running on the end user’s computer, along with a means of configuring folders for automatic upload or download . This feature of Share portals is especially useful in situations where there is a time zone difference between transfer end-points, where content is ingested from multiple locations, or where the same content needs to be distributed to multiple locations .

➜➜ Metadata Collection: This feature allows end users to populate predefined fields with information describing the file they are about to send . The experience is fully customizable, offering system administrators the ability to define fields for any parameter — often things such as file size, language or shooting location — to ensure that all of the necessary information is captured . The metadata remains associated with the file, making it easy for a person or process to take action upon receipt . For example, someone in the media library can archive the file in an appropriate category, or an automated workflow can send it to a particular distribution partner . This capability is implemented via customer-hosted web pages, which enables customers to tie file submissions to existing form-based workflows and metadata policies . Metadata is stored in JSON files that accompany, and are linked to, the associated content . This feature is very useful for automating downstream processing in cases where the content was not submitted with an equivalent sidecar file (such as an XML), and also supports requested file deliveries with pre-filled metadata .

➜➜ Single Sign On (SSO) with SAML: Media Shuttle includes advanced identity management so that enterprises can easily and securely onboard and manage large numbers of users . Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) allows system administrators to engage a third-party Web identity provider to grant users access to multiple systems . This contemporary approach to enabling the use of a corporate directory for user authentication has benefits for both administrators and end users . Administrators can easily provision large user groups, and individual employees can simply log into Media Shuttle with their corporate account credentials .

The fact that passwords are not stored in the cloud by Signiant adds one more level of protection for the customer’s high-value digital assets . When web SSO is used, user passwords are never exposed to Media Shuttle web servers . Instead, Media Shuttle utilizes a trust relationship to interact with identity gateways, like the Active Directory Federated Services gateway, to securely retrieve and validate access tokens for users . With SAML auto-registration, users are automatically added as members of the portal with full permissions upon successful SAML authentication . This method reduces the administrative overhead associated with adding new members to portals .

➜➜ CloudSpeX: CloudSpeX is Signiant’s patent-pending technology for “pre-flight” file format validation . CloudSpeX automatically extracts metadata from a file to be sent and compares the metadata against a cloud-based delivery specification . If the metadata indicates that the file is compliant with the spec, the transfer proceeds; if it is not compliant the transfer is stopped and the administrator is notified . This capability is focused on video assets, with metadata parameters typically relating to file type and/or encoding parameters . By forcing compliance with a defined standard prior to transferring files, Media Shuttle can ensure that valuable time and resources are not spent transferring bad assets and dealing with them at the receiving end . This pre-validation saves time, helps manage the volume and complexity of today’s multiplatform media ecosystems, and ensures greater network efficiency .

Signiant maintains a library of standard delivery specifications, and customers can optionally define their own . To set up CloudSpeX, Media Shuttle portal administrators simply associate a specific delivery specification template with a portal . A single portal can be configured with multiple CloudSpeX specifications, providing for even greater flexibility . CloudSpeX ‘Interested Party’ email notifications can be configured to allow for broader distribution of detailed delivery compliance failures .

FIGURE 8 . METADATA COLLECTION FORM




The CloudSpeX functionality is another example of how innovative

use of the cloud can benefit Signiant’s customers . Because

CloudSpeX is delivered via the cloud, this capability can be

accessed from anywhere in the world, by every partner in the supply

chain . Updates to the delivery specification are immediately available

to everyone, with each partner automatically compelled to deal

with the most recent version .

MEDIA SHUTTLE WITH CLOUD OBJECT STORAGESigniant’s newest Media Shuttle option allows customers to use

their cloud object storage tenancy in Amazon S3 and/or Microsoft

Azure Blob storage in a Media Shuttle deployment . There are

several reasons this might be of interest:

➜➜ The customer may be undertaking a large-scale migration to the cloud and therefore desire object storage compatibility for all storage-intensive applications .

➜➜ There may be interest in taking advantage of the elasticity of the cloud for a specific Media Shuttle project, such as file movement for a major event . ‘Renting’ cloud storage rather than buying on-premises storage might be a far more cost-effective option .

➜➜ A cloud-storage-centric use case might also be the driver . Without Media Shuttle, there is really no way for end users to easily and intuitively move content into and out of cloud storage .

➜➜ The customer may want a solution that is even easier to deploy than standard Media Shuttle . As described below, an object storage deployment of Shuttle takes Signiant’s cloud-formed SaaS strategy one step further and eliminates even more burden on the IT department .

This version of Media Shuttle borrows features and capabilities

from Signiant’s other SaaS product, Flight, a utility designed for

bulk upload/downloads of large files to/from cloud object storage .

Specifically, it implements both the control plane and the data

plane as true, cloud-formed, multi-tenancy SaaS solutions . With

an object storage Media Shuttle deployment the Signiant SaaS

control layer continues to provide control functions, but now the

data layer is also in the cloud, where auto-scaling, redundant and

load balanced file transfer servers are hosted and maintained by

Signiant and connected to the customer’s cloud object storage

tenancy . The system architecture is illustrated Figure 9 .

This multi-tenant, auto-scaling, SaaS implementation frees the

customer from the need to buy, deploy and manage their own

storage, servers and software, thereby reducing even further

both the initial CAPEX investment and the IT staff’s workload .

Customers are free to use more than one cloud storage provider,

or to continue with their standard on-premises deployment, or

to mix both on-premises and cloud object storage portals within

a single Media Shuttle deployment .

It is important to note that some Media Shuttle customers have

always chosen to deploy their systems in the cloud . However,

this was previously accomplished by the customer installing and

managing the file transfer server software on virtual machines that

they themselves purchased from the cloud platform vendor . Like

any other “cloud-washed” approach, this method leaves the system

administration and maintenance responsibility for the data plane

with the client, and fails to truly leverage the scalability, elasticity,

resilience, or performance of a true multi-tenancy SaaS solution .

CLOUD

CLOUD

AND/OR

• WEB INTERFACE • EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS• CLIENT UPDATES• FILE TRANSFER LOGISTICS• DATA COLLECTION

CUSTOMER’S CLOUD OBJECT

STORAGE TENANCY

END USERS’ LAPTOPS/ DESKTOPS

WITH SIGNIANT APP INSTALLED

INTERNET (OR CUSTOMER NETWORK)

FIGURE 9 . MEDIA SHUTTLE WITH CLOUD OBJECT STORAGE

END USEREND USEROPS/ADMINIT

SIGNIANT DATA LAYER SAAS

AUTOSCALING CLOUD SERVERS & SOFTWARE MANAGED BY SIGNIANT

SIGNIANT CONTROLLAYER SAAS




Lacking a true data plane integration to the provider’s cloud storage,

such deployments further restrict the customer to only being able

to utilize the cloud provider’s more expensive block storage, and

not their cheaper, more scalable, object storage, which is generally

more optimal for storing large amounts of unstructured data .

Customer deployments of standard Media Shuttle in the cloud

therefore do enjoy the benefits deriving from the SaaS nature

of Media Shuttle’s control plane, but not the advantages of a

cloud-formed data plane SaaS .

Media Shuttle with cloud object storage is priced and packaged

with the same tiered subscription model as standard Media Shuttle .

Customers choose a tier based on the number of active users in a

given month, with price per user declining as the number of users

increases . Each user tier now also includes, at no extra charge, a

baseline volume of content that can be moved to/from the cloud

each month . “Pay-as-you-go” overage prices are specified for

both users and payload for each tier .

Customers looking to deploying Media Shuttle for “hands-on” file

movement to object storage in the cloud may also have a parallel

use case for more automated bulk upload/download capabilities

to/from the same cloud storage tenancy . Signiant recommends

that they consider adding Flight to their technology ecosystem to

meet this need . Flight is a simple utility that can be controlled via a

CLI (Command Line Interface); or connected directly into a Signiant

Manager+Agents installation via a pre-built workflow component .

WEB TRANSFER API FOR EMBEDDED APPLICATIONSWhile most customers need the full Media Shuttle solution, some

enterprises have already invested in building their own web

applications — and may want to add speed, security, and reliability

to the underlying file movement . For example, media services

providers or large enterprises with in-house web developers may

have built custom content submission portals with very specific

features for metadata creation, search, etc . For these situations,

Signiant offers a JavaScript API that allows customers’ web

developers to embed Signiant file transfer acceleration directly into

their own in-house web applications .

This offering is known as the Signiant Web Transfer API . Signiant’s

SaaS products employ a modular architecture and this is the same

API that Media Shuttle is built upon — so many attributes are the

same . As with the full Media Shuttle application, API customers can

choose between on-premises storage and cloud object storage in

the data plane . In both cases, the API now replaces the Signiant file

transfer software on the client side, and server implementation is

as follows:

➜➜ If the customer chooses to deploy on-premises storage, an on-premises server running Signiant software is also required .

➜➜ If the customer prefers to use their cloud object storage tenancy, the server-side compute resources and software are provided by Signiant as a fully managed, elastic SaaS in Amazon S3 and/or Microsoft Azure .

➜➜ On the control plane, file transfer software updates and file transfer activity tracking are still managed by the Signiant SaaS in the cloud, but all the end user interfaces are built and hosted by the customer . The pricing model for the Web Transfer API is based on payload — i .e . the cumulative volume of data moved during the annual subscription period . As with standard Media Shuttle, the file transfer server software is provided at no cost .

CAD FILES | USE CASE SNAPSHOT

Product designers use Media Shuttle to collaborate on detailed drawings and communicate details to fabricators.

MEDICAL IMAGES | USE CASE SNAPSHOT

Healthcare professionals use Media Shuttle to share medical images for diagnosis and treat-ment collaboration.




Media Shuttle was introduced in 2012 and has since become the

de facto tool for fast, reliable sending and sharing of files . Because it

can be used to send files of any type and size, across any network,

over any distance, Media Shuttle has applications across many

industry sectors — and it is useful for any organization, big or

small, that has such requirements . Able to scale from the smallest

boutique operation or start-up, with ten or less users, to the largest

global enterprise with thousands of users, Media Shuttle’s “pay

only for what you use” pricing accommodates customers of all

sizes . Because of its multi-tenancy SaaS nature, all customers,

irrespective of size, receive the same core service, performance,

reliability, and security . When the solution is upgraded to the

Enterprise tier, all of the incremental features are immediately

available to all users .

Optimized for sending and sharing large files, Media Shuttle is

particularly useful for organizations with video-centric workflows .

Video files are large, there are generally short timelines involved,

and video assets often involve multiple creative processes that

result in a geographically distributed supply chain . Historically

these use cases were largely restricted to the major Media &

Entertainment (M&E) companies such as film studios, post-

production and production companies, special effects houses,

TV news and sports divisions, and broadcast and cable networks .

But in today’s world, the sending and sharing of large video files

extends to many other areas outside traditional M&E . Video is

the communication medium of choice in every corner of today’s

business world, making Media Shuttle an essential tool for

advertising agencies, corporate communications and marketing

departments, online and mobile video download and streaming

platforms, religious organizations, sports teams and leagues, and

many more .

Furthermore, the need to send and share large digital files across

geographically distributed locations, or to and from cloud storage,

is no longer the privileged domain of video-centric operations .

Areas as diverse as life and earth sciences, the pharmaceutical and

chemical industries, energy exploration, product design, software

development, and big data analytics, all increasingly work with very

large files and require the same kinds of capabilities and tools for

moving them .

Media Shuttle is the right solution for addressing the proliferation

of “hands-on” file movement use cases across all these, and

countless other, traditional and emerging sectors of data-centric

human activity .

This is what the 100,000 global users of Media Shuttle know.

Who Should Use Media Shuttle?

ABOUT SIGNIANT

Signiant’s intelligent file movement software helps enterprises ensure fast, secure, and reliable delivery of large data sets over public and private IP networks . Built on Signiant’s patented technology, the company’s on-premises software and SaaS solutions move petabytes of high-value data every day between users, applications and systems with proven ease .

Signiant is a venture-backed company based in Boston, Massachusetts, with development teams in Ottawa Canada and sales offices around the world .

SEISMIC DATA | USE CASE SNAPSHOT

Earth scientists use Media Shuttle to send large seismic data sets used for fundamental research as well as gas and oil exploration.



MEDIA SHUTTLE - Signiantinfo.signiant.com/rs/134-QHZ-485/images/Shuttle Product White Paper... ·...

Documents

Transcript of MEDIA SHUTTLE - Signiantinfo.signiant.com/rs/134-QHZ-485/images/Shuttle Product White Paper... ·...