Both Flight Deck and Jet are intended for the administration of automated transfers ⎯ neither is an end user product. Each web interface provides technical staff with control of many different parameters, as well as a dashboard that includes a map of endpoints and information about network conditions and individual transfers.
Control & Visibility
Alongside granular control of content movement, media companies also need visibility into the health of the deployment, real-time feedback on the state of active transfers, and reliable chain-of-custody history.
Operate at Any Scale
Signiant provides full-stack products that perform all of these functions and are capable of serving as the command center for file access across the global supply chain. To understand the full power of Signiant solutions, think of our offerings as tightly coupled infrastructure software and application software. Our foundational infrastructure software is the transport functionality that securely accelerates the movement of large data sets. There’s a lot of high-tech secret sauce in that transport but, no matter how advanced, it doesn’t stand on its own. A layer of application software keeps complex systems in sync, and enables centralized control and visibility of all file transfers. It’s the addition of this higher-level logic that allows Signiant systems to solve real business problems associated with sending and sharing valuable media assets.
System Orchestration
Due to the nature of advanced transport protocols, Signiant software must be installed at each end of a transfer route to enable acceleration. Every Signiant deployment is consequently a distributed system, with software on many computers throughout the ecosystem. Our product portfolio includes varying forms of this endpoint software, some installed by the customer on their own computers, some deployed and managed by Signiant. Our systems feature a central control function that communicates with all the distributed software instances and coordinates their activities so that they work together to deliver content exactly as specified.
Endpoint Configuration
In an accelerated transport system, the administration of many individual software instances in disparate physical locations presents an ongoing challenge.
Where the number of endpoints remains small, customers can individually configure each software endpoint and upgrade when necessary. At scale, this method becomes highly impractical. To lighten the workload, policy-based management functionality was designed into our Flight Deck product. With this approach, configuration parameters and changes are automatically propagated out to every endpoint, yielding huge efficiencies for system administrators of large-scale deployments. It’s a key reason that Flight Deck will consistently deliver the lowest TCO when compared with competing products.
To increase reliability and prevent network overload in large-scale deployments, Flight Deck offers unparalleled resource management capabilities, including:
- Adjustable Settings – for WAN acceleration and bandwidth ranges delineated by ceiling and floor limits
- Custom Rules – create custom rules that limit the number of concurrent transfers and allocate bandwidth across those transfers
- Queuing Mechanisms – lets administrators prioritize and finely tune asset delivery based on business needs and content delivery windows
With Media Shuttle and Jet, a multi-tenant cloud control plane again comes into play for endpoint configuration. Parameters and software updates can be automatically pushed to each endpoint, providing an efficient means of setting up or managing the system, no matter the size of the deployment.
Job Configuration & Transfer Initiation
Signiant stakeholders within a media company require easy access to a range of information about what’s going on in the system. They must be able to monitor system health, receive proactive notifications if there’s a problem, and make sure content arrived as planned. Every Signiant product has a web interface to facilitate system configuration and file movement initiation. These interfaces also provide access to real-time information for ongoing monitoring, as well as historical data for chain-of-custody questions and forensics.
Every Signiant product interface is tuned for a specific use case and persona.
System-to-System
Person-to-Person
With Media Shuttle, technical admins, portal admins, and end users are each offered a different user experience. While technical administrators configure storage and security parameters, and portal admins design the portal and add/remove members, end users encounter a simple, intuitive means of sending and sharing content.
Signiant offers a comprehensive set of APIs that replicate and enhance various functions available through the web interfaces. API integrations allow other systems to adjust system parameters, initiate transfers, or take action once the transfer is complete. While many customers use our products on a standalone basis, APIs make it possible for the same full-stack products to operate seamlessly with other technologies as part of a fully automated workflow.
To fully realize the benefits of transport optimization technology, Signiant’s engineers have developed complete products that provide central control and visibility in addition to core acceleration functionality. There’s more to this than meets the eye, and our architectures handle a lot of complexity behind the scenes.
Built from the ground up with scale in mind, our solutions solve real problems for media companies of all sizes. Whether you’re using Flight Deck, Media Shuttle, Jet, or any combination, Signiant allows you to easily manage any number of endpoints, partners and end users. Along the way, we’re always thinking about the people and systems that interact with our technology and optimizing the ways in which we fit into the modern media ecosystem.
Control and Visibility at any Scale
The ability to execute and coordinate all this activity at any scale is central to the Signiant value proposition. Signiant’s customers include most of the world’s largest media conglomerates, some of whom manage thousands of intra-company storage endpoints and partner connections. Because we serve as the connective tissue between companies of all sizes, scaling out to accommodate huge global deployments is essential, but so is the ability to scale down to meet the needs of even the smallest companies in the media ecosystem.