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BlueArc Energises BEAM.TV's Storage Abilities

BlueArc Storage Systems Enable BEAM.TV to Digitise Content and Deliver Media Around the Globe

London, Olympia, UK, STORAGE EXPO, October 16th 2003

BlueArc, a leader in high performance, highly scalable network attached storage (NAS), today announced that it has completed work with BEAM.TV, an online approval and archive service for the television advertising industry. The deal, which sees BlueArc providing a SiliconServer equipped with three terabytes of storage, will enable BEAM.TV to constantly achieve the high standards of performance required to use the Internet to archive, distribute and manage media in the broadcast industry.

BEAM.TV was established three years ago from within post-production house The Mill. Ridley Scott was working on the film 'Gladiator' from the US while post-production was being undertaken in the UK, which meant approval cycles were becoming increasingly lengthy with edits being dispatched physically via tape. After the installation of BlueArc's SiliconServer, BEAM.TV was able to realise the following benefits:

Ease of control and maintenance through the introduction of only a single network space
Increased reliability and the ability to provide a non-disruptive back-up facility
The infrastructure to provide an immediate disaster recovery facility
Lower costs during installation, expansion and maintenance; including the time and costs associated with both administration of systems and any future scaling which may be needed

Prior to installing the BlueArc system, BEAM.TV operated a direct attached storage (DAS) approach, which had reached capacity and could scale further only at extreme cost. In the event of a disaster, the legacy system would take up to three days for full restoration - an unacceptable level of risk in a fast-moving industry such as post-production. Additionally, due to varying systems being added each year, a single unified system had not been selected. This combination of events resulted in BEAM.TV's storage disks often being full and further expansion proved difficult and costly.

"We originally wanted a BlueArc system because of its reliability and ease of deployment. After having seen how The Mill benefited from a BlueArc system, adopting it for BEAM.TV was the obvious choice," said Stuart Peters, Technical Director, BEAM.TV. He continued, "The new BlueArc system has a tremendously high bandwidth for the applications that we use at BEAM.TV giving us great room for growth, but it was the scalability, reliability and lower operational costs of the BlueArc system that really made the difference."

Geoff Barrall, CTO and founder of BlueArc Corporation, said, "This latest win cements BlueArc's position as the preferred solution provider for the UK digital media market. We are sure that the performance and scalability of the SiliconServer will meet all of BEAM.TV's current needs, and will continue to do so in the years to come."

About BlueArc Corporation

BlueArc® Corporation changes the economics of network storage by helping customers manage more information with less effort. BlueArc's SiliconServer storage systems enable organizations to maximize performance and reduce operating costs through the movement of software functions into programmable hardware. Since 1998, BlueArc has provided scalable and reliable products, services and solutions to help enterprises achieve unmatched productivity and profitability from their data. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, California with UK operations based in Bracknell, England. More information on BlueArc is available on the Internet at www.bluearc.com.