AJA announces Equity Stake in Diskover Data

AJA Video Systems has announced that it has taken a proactive equity stake in data analytics software developer Diskover Data and simultaneously launched AJA Diskover Media Edition. The new software is based on open source roots and lets media and entertainment professionals (M&E) easily search, find, and analyze media asset data originating from on-premises, remote, and cloud storage - aggregating associated metadata into a unified global index. The solution enables users to make more informed data decisions, a key capability as the M&E industry is on track to create more data in the next three years than it has in the last three decades.

AJA Diskover Media Edition is designed to serve a range of professionals in the M&E industry, from executives to systems administrators, IT managers, operational personnel, creatives and beyond. The software allows users to easily index hundreds of petabytes of data and more to easily locate files, analyze them, and pinpoint misallocated resources. It ultimately saves companies time and expenditure by helping them to identify wasted storage space, aging and unused files, data changes, and more.

With AJA Diskover Media Edition, metadata can also be seamlessly harvested to add business context and insights to files to inform data decisions and business processes, and to streamline workflows. It includes custom plug-ins that address the specific needs of M&E professionals around the world, regardless of the physical or virtual platforms utilized to store media content. AJA Diskover Media Edition further enables users to search across multiple platforms simultaneously, and discover and present data in a master index, while generating reports and cost analysis to a range of roles across productions or enterprises. Key highlights include: 

  • A single master index: Ensure that all files across cloud, remote, and on-premises storage are up to date, and that data access and rights can be easily controlled on a per-user level, with Diskover’s constant indexing and centrally located indexes.
  • Snapshots in time: Tap into a history of indexes to easily compare storage over time and project future growth demands, as well as identify areas of concern.
  • Elasticsearch: Scale to any environment size and type with an open-source core that simplifies asset search and provides insights into associated storage costs. Easily integrate with external APIs and order management platforms.
  • Tagging: Use tags to support workflow actions and approval processes, such as file deletion approval on an expired asset.
  • Analysis: Advance media workflows and monetization efforts with access to robust technical metadata (i.e. codec, number of audio files, resolution, etc.) via a simple search. Gain insights that provide team members with in-depth information about each asset and where it landed for more informed decision-making.
  • Support for hybrid environments: Seamlessly run Diskover across on-premises storage solutions and cloud-based storage services. 
  • An intuitive web-browser UI: Access AJA Diskover Media Edition from anywhere with an internet connection and easily deploy multiple indexers globally at other facilities, all reporting into one common platform and master index.
  • Security: Read-only access to the file systems and a web-based UI not directly connected to the storage prevents file corruption, deletion, or unwanted changes to assets.
  • Global asset overview: Provide remote teams and individuals with a global view of the assets for each given production, group of productions, or client - empowering their own relationship with the data.
  • Cost analysis tools: Make more informed data-related decisions about time, resources, and investments to reduce operating costs.

“We’ve seen firsthand how unwieldy data management has become for our clients in content production and post, which poses a huge challenge as the M&E market braces for an unprecedented content boom. The speed at which files are proliferating, determining where those files are stored, how much that storage costs, who is tapping into those files and where they’re being archived is essential, but that information is often hard to track down,” shared AJA President Nick Rashby. “AJA Diskover Media Edition takes the guesswork out of the equation, helping M&E professionals work much more efficiently. One of the secrets to AJA's success these many years has been our ability to deliver technologies that solve industry problems through partnerships with companies like Diskover, and we’re excited to share the resulting technology with the M&E community.”

“We developed Diskover data curation technology as data management was just emerging as a problem across a number of industries,” shared Diskover CEO Paul Honrud. “Our solutions are already in use by companies around the world spanning technology, enterprise and medical, and we’re excited to scale our offering into the media content creation arena. AJA offers best in class solutions for content production and is an ideal partner for us, as many of their existing customers will benefit from our solution.”

Ken Spickler, Director of Engineering at Visual Data Media Services, shared, “Diskover’s web interface allows anyone on our team to quickly access and identify any piece of information they’re looking for - whether tracking storage usage, identifying how to better manage our files or keeping apprised of our data growth. We look forward to seeing all the new features that AJA brings to the table with its Media Edition.”

Pricing and Availability
AJA Diskover Media Edition is now available for an annual subscription of $11,995 USD per node.