Today axle ai, Inc. and Spectra Logic announced immediate availability of complete solutions to help M & E customers more simply store, analyze, and retrieve vast amounts of media, from terabyte to petabyte scale. These solutions combine axle ai 2019 ‘radically simple’ media management software and the Spectra BlackPearl® Converged Storage System. By applying artificial intelligence techniques to all media content on BlackPearl storage system, axle ai software automatically identifies and tags content, so that even non-technical users will easily and instantly find content by image description, speech-to-text, and face recognition, and can also review, comment, select and share media. The BlackPearl storage system itself is able to transparently and seamlessly utilize any combination of online, nearline, archive and cloud storage. Both companies are exhibiting in Hall 7 at this week's IBC Conference in Amsterdam, stands 7.D33 (axle ai) and 7.B50 (Spectra Logic).

Sam Bogoch, CEO of axle ai said, “We're perhaps best known for offering ai-driven media search for small and midsize teams, yet are increasingly managing very large amounts of content storage, often for major projects or episodic shows.  When founded in 2012, we expected to target media collections in the tens of terabytes, but we've progressively scaled our platform and leveraged powerful web-scale technologies like Elastic Search, so that today axle ai is commonly used to manage, tag and search hundreds of terabytes to petabytes.”

The solutions combine axle ai 2019 with Spectra’s powerful BlackPearl Converged Storage System including the BlackPearl RioBroker interface and API. BlackPearl RioBroker is a data mover that resides on the network and drives reliable, high-performance migration of media and other files between Spectra’s BlackPearl platform. Hossein ZiaShakeri, Senior VP of Business Development and Alliances at Spectra, said, “These solution bundles are further evidence that BlackPearl is providing industry leadership in cost-effective object-based storage for media. We are delighted that axle ai was able to leverage our BlackPearl RioBroker APIs and next-generation approach to media storage, and even more delighted to work with axle ai to begin offering AI-driven solutions and search capability to the media storage marketplace.”

Bogoch added, “With BlackPearl rapidly becoming a standard-setter for a modern archival platform in the market, it’s a great time for us to provide integration for this simple-yet-sophisticated solution to help manage and preserve customers’ growing content archives. With these very affordable, preconfigured bundles, we’re teaming up to remove the guesswork from making petabytes of video searchable.”

Pricing and Availability 
Complete solutions including axle ai 2019 software and rackmount server hardware, and BlackPearl storage hardware and BlackPearl RioBroker are available in a range of configurations and prices starting at $54,995 MSRP.  All authorized Spectra Logic resellers, as well as axle ai resellers worldwide are authorized to sell the solutions.

axle ai Media Management 
axle is radically simple media management that makes it easy for anyone to catalogue, search and even automatically find the right footage from within a browser. axle 2019 software discovers all media residing on storage, serving it in a browser interface within Safari, Chrome, Firefox and IE, and a panel for Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Users can tag many clips at once with custom metadata, work on a subclip level to insert comments, or mark in/out segments for transcode or export to an editor. Available ai modules enable search on visual similarity and speech-to-text, rather than up-front tagging or logging. The latest version of axle ai is more than four times faster than its 2018 equivalent at cataloging large storage pools, and provides additional features for managing high capacity, high throughput media workflows.

Spectra BlackPearl Converged Storage System 
BlackPearl enables users to deploy a tiered storage strategy that is cost effective, easy to manage and scalable to exabytes of data. The system provides an easy, cloud-like interface to on-premise storage solutions, including Spectra disk and tape libraries, and multiple public cloud integrations. System solutions allow data to move seamlessly into disk, tape, and cloud storage in a way not previously possible. To meet the demands of exponential data growth and long-term retention, Spectra’s BlackPearl enables users to easily store large data sets forever at virtually no cost. 

About axle ai 
axle ai is the recognized leader in developing radically simple media management software. It solutions have helped over 500 organizations improve the way they create, share and store digital video content with media management solutions that are easy to install, use and afford. axle’s radically simple media management uniquely addresses a burgeoning need and has caught on rapidly among video professionals in post-production, education, broadcast, corporate, sports, house of worship, non-profit, advertising-marketing, and government organizations worldwide. At its introduction, axle’s software was recognized with the IBC 2012 Best of Show award and at NAB 2013 with the prestigious DV Magazine Black Diamond and Post Picks awards. axle ai's recently introduced connectr™ software offers a powerful tool for scripting media workflows, driven by a graphical front end with connect-the-blocks visualization. axle ai, Inc. is a privately held company; its founders have extensive industry experience in media asset management for creative applications. Investors include Jason Calacanis's LAUNCH accelerator and Quake Capital. Learn more at http://www.axle.ai and http://www.connectr.ai.

About Spectra Logic Corporation[SM]  
Spectra Logic develops data storage and data management solutions that solve the problem of long-term digital preservation for organizations dealing with exponential data growth. Dedicated solely to storage innovation for 40 years, Spectra Logic’s uncompromising product and customer focus is proven by the adoption of its solutions by leaders in multiple industries globally. Spectra enables affordable, multi-decade data storage and access by creating new methods of managing information in all forms of storage—including archive, backup, cold storage, private cloud and public cloud. To learn more, visit www.SpectraLogic.com.