Ascent, HP Teaming on "Digital Vault"

"Ascent Media Group and Hewlett-Packard have formed a strategic alliance to co-develop, market and deliver services and technologies that enable clients including studios to archive, repurpose and distribute media digitally for the multichannel market.

As part of the agreement, AMG and HP will co-develop a service platform and provide consultation and support services. The announcement formalizes the companies' three-year collaboration through which they have serviced such customers as Sony Pictures Entertainment and Paramount Pictures.

"The shift we're seeing in the media industry from physical to digital processes is as significant as the move to digital transactions by the finance and securities industry -- one of many industries HP has helped migrate to digital," said Tom Kuehle, vp digital content services at HP. "By creating a digital vault and enabling secure processes for handling transactions of media companies' most valuable assets -- their content -- HP and Ascent will help maximize those assets in this changing market."

Services are centered in AMG's $17 million, 100,000-square-foot Digital Media Data Center in Burbank, which houses a digital archive with a petabyte of online and nearline storage integrated across a global mesh network. AMG is launching additional network hubs in New York, London and Singapore, enabling the alliance to take a customer's ingested content from any of these locations, repurpose it and distribute it electronically worldwide."

By Carolyn Giardina, The Hollywood Reporter