SGI still promoting Burstware:
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SGI Leads Media Streaming Video Server Market More Than 1,300 SGI(TM) Broadband
RELATED SYMBOLS: (SGI)(FTE)(IFMX)(AAPL)(T)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jun 12, 2000 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- With more than
1,300 broadband media server installations, SGI (NYSE: SGI) leads the world in
the development, sales and deployment of media streaming technologies for
broadband networks. These broadband media servers provide the capacity to
deliver more than 150,000 MPEG streams over digital networks using Internet
protocol. Whether those networks are public or private, intranets or the
Internet, LANs or DSL, connected to PCs or set-top boxes, SGI and its solution
partners provide field-proven broadband media streaming solutions and
advancements.
According to a Frost & Sullivan Video Server 2000 report, SGI leads the Intranet
video server market with a 25.3% market share. Primary media streaming
applications that drive demand for servers in this market include corporate
communications, distance learning and distance training.
"SGI remains well positioned in the marketplace with a large installed base of
video servers and computer hardware that allows them to supply existing
customers with technologies to support emerging applications," said Rufus
Connell, Industry Manager, Frost & Sullivan. "SGI remains a very competitive
force in the video server space as the company focuses efforts in promoting its
Media Commerce solutions that leverage its complete server line."
SGI pioneered media streaming beginning with Interactive Television, the
precursor to broadband media. With Time-Warner (soon-to-be AOL-Time Warner) and
AT&T, SGI built the hardware and software to power the most ambitious
interactive television trial of the mid-1990s in Orlando, Fla. This system,
known as the Full Service Network, included set-top boxes developed by SGI, SGI
media servers and SGI software for movies on demand, multichannel scheduled
playout, interactive shopping and online news -- contributed to the early
development of broadband Internet services.
"SGI has been historically known as the leader in digital content creation,
producing the high performance workstations preferred by artists and animators
worldwide for creating everything from Hollywood blockbusters to the world's
most exciting video games," said Greg Estes, vice president and general manager,
Telecommunications and Media Group, SGI. "Now, the emergence of broadband
networks allows our customers to leverage our scalable content management and
content delivery solutions as well as our professional services for their Media
Commerce deployments."
At the heart of SGI's long-standing heritage in media streaming is the SGI(TM)
Origin(TM) family of scalable ccNUMA servers -- the development platform for
industry-leading broadband media streaming, interactive television, media
management, broadcast and digital cinema applications.
Robust Performance for Media Streaming Applications
The SGI media filesystem was designed from the ground up to handle the world's
largest media files and media storage demands. A server's filesystem is stressed
more by media streaming than almost any other application.
In perhaps the most demanding real-time media filesystem application anywhere,
at the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, 40 satellite and control room broadcast
video and audio streams are continually being ingested into an SGI Media
Server(TM). This server makes all these video streams available on demand to any
and all 300 journalist workstations within a few seconds.
Scalable Server Architecture Provides for Growing Media Streaming Solutions
The tremendous success of the award-winning SGI Origin is due to SGI's ccNUMA
architecture, which allows for seamless scalability from 2 to 512 processors in
a single shared-memory system. This architecture is based on a series of
SGI-designed crossbar switches, which scale the bandwidth and I/O of the system
as the system configuration scales, delivering true application scalability. As
media streaming needs grow and the demands for network access speeds, storage
and number of simultaneous streams increase, customers can easily add streaming
capability, network cards, storage I/O and even CPUs to their original SGI
Origin series systems. SGI also provides support for terabytes of storage, a
variety of high-performance network access cards, JBOD and RAID options with
SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces and a journaled filesystem for fast recovery
of very large media files. SGI also offers a clustered filesystem, instrumental
in a Storage Area Network (SAN) environment, allowing customers to move vast
amounts of data between distribution servers at a very rapid rate.
Development Platform of Choice
SGI is the development platform for Kasenna(TM) MediaBase, the predominant
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 media streaming solution available today for streaming
broadband content to PC clients. Not only is this application field-proven on
SGI, new versions of MediaBase are shipped first on SGI servers.
Wide Range of Solutions
SGI platforms support the widest range of media management and serving solutions
available, including SGI Media Server(TM) for production and broadcast,
Panasonic DNA(TM), SGI Media Server for broadband, Kasenna MediaBase and
burst.com Burstware(R) for media serving; and SGI StudioCentral(TM), Keops(TM)
MediaWorks and Informix(R) Media360(TM) for media management. SGI was first to
deliver a broadband media server that supports multiple industry-leading
streaming formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, RealVideo(R), RealAudio(R), MP3 and
QuickTime(TM).
Worldwide Digital Media Expertise
With digital media expertise centers in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York,
the Netherlands and Tokyo and installations from Singapore to Stockholm, SGI
Professional Services is more experienced at large-scale media streaming
deployments than any other computer manufacturer.
Customer installations of SGI Media Commerce(TM) broadband media streaming
solutions include world leaders in telecommunications, education, Fortune 500
companies, Sciences and entertainment such as:
MCI/Worldcom
France Telecom
NOB (Netherlands)
British Telecom
Stanford University
Harvard University
California State Polytechnic University of Pomona
Lucent Bell Labs Innovation Center
Pepsi Center
Mayo Clinic
CNN
RAI
NASA
About SGI
SGI provides a broad range of broadband Internet, high-performance computing and
advanced graphics solutions that enable customers to understand and conquer
their toughest computing problems. SGI broadband and Internet solutions enable
customers to expand their business in Media Commerce -- transacting content over
networks. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices worldwide, the
company is located on the Web at www.sgi.com.
NOTE: Silicon Graphics is a registered trademark, and SGI, Origin, SGI Media
Commerce, Media Commerce, SGI Media Server, StudioCentral and the SGI logo are
trademarks, of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Burstware is a registered trademark of
burst.com. Kasenna is a trademark of Kasenna, Inc. Informix is a registered
trademark and Media360 is a trademark of Informix Corporation. RealVideo and
RealAudio are registered trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc. QuickTime is a
trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the
property of their respective owners.
SOURCE SGI
CONTACT: Lisa Pistacchio, PR Programs Manager of SGI, 650-933-5683, or
pistacchi@sgi.com
/Company News On-Call: prnewswire.com  or fax,
800-758-5804, ext. 795806
URL: sgi.com
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