RORKE DATA DEPLOYS LIVE FIBRE-CHANNEL,
WIDE-AREA SAN AT AES/NEW YORK
Eden Prairie, Mn., October 11, 1999 — Rorke Data, Inc. announced today that the recent Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention in New York City (September 24 - 27) was the site of what may be the first instance of networking both complementary and competitive companies into a single Fibre-Channel system during a live trade show.
"This was a significant breakthrough for the promise of fibre-Channel to deliver open-platform, networking and storage," said Bob Herzan, Director/Worldwide Sales, AV Division, Rorke Data, "and I can't think of a better place for it than this past AES show. OEMs as diverse as Digidesign, Sonic Solutions, Tascam and mSoft were able to harness Fibre-Channel's power and efficiency using the live, wide-area configuration of Rorke's StudioNet-FC. Among other show floor solutions, the 1 Terabyte capacity of the StudioNet-FC configuration allowed multiple Digidesign and Sonic Solutions demo stations at their respective booths, high-speed, high-bandwidth access to Rorke's storage. The same storage was also networked to Tascam digital dubbers at the Tascam booth and to mSoft's ServerSound audio effects retrieval system."
StudioNet-FC is a full-duplex serial communications interface for networks in high-performance audio environments. Offering rates up to 200 MB/second, StudioNet-FC eliminates all SCSI and reliability problems, including SCSI termination, SCSI IDs, unwieldy cables, and inappropriate cable lengths. By means of multiple Rorke Data AVR-9000/FC Switches, the system provides users with a solution that is upgradeable from a single host storage channel to a multiple host storage network of up to 126 IDs per arbitrated loop.
Doug Perkins, mSoft Vice President of Marketing, noted that the connection of competitive companies onto the same network was "a dramatic demonstration of the future. Just to have these companies — mSoft, Rorke, Digidesign, Tascam and Sonic Solutions — engaged in a mutual effort on the AES convention floor was a very interesting thing to see.
"Each of their booths," said Perkins, "accessed a Rorke-provided Fibre-Channel network, which created, as far as I know, one of the first live 'Intranet' systems at a trade show. In our particular case, users were able to access mSoft's ServerSound audio retrieval system and then download audio at a blazing speed to a workstation. It was an incredible demonstration of the great strides that are being made toward realizing the post industry's dream of total interconnectivity."
Rorke Data has a long-standing commitment to the Audio/Video marketplace, said Bob Herzan, demonstrated by the company's consistent involvement with the industry's leading developers of non-linear editing equipment, and its adaptation of Rorke storage technologies to evolving A/V needs. As a result, Herzan noted, StudioNet-FC is highly adaptable to the unique applications and workflows needed for a particular environment, and supports the Macintosh, NT, SGI and Sun Microsystems platforms; can be configured with either file or volume management software; and is scalable with Fibre Channel JBOD, Fibre-to-SCSI RAID 3, and Fibre-to-Fibre Raid 3 storage.
Rorke Data is a full digital storage solutions provider with expertise in SAN-connectivity, FC RAID, high performance tape and optical libraries, Unix, NT and Mac environments, high bandwidth networks, digital asset and document management, and engineering and maintenance services. Founded in 1985, Rorke Data is a privately held Minnesota corporation. Together with its European subsidiary, Rorke Data Europe, located in Emmen, The Netherlands, the company is composed of six divisions: Audio/Video, Prepress, Imaging, Document Management, Digital Media Supplies, and Engineering and Installation Services. More information about Rorke Data can be found at www.rorke.com.
For more information, contact: Rorke Data, Inc., 7626 Golden Triangle Drive, Eden Prairie, MN 55344 U.S.A.; 800/328-8147 or 612/943-7880; fax: 612/829-0988; web site: www.rorke.com
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