Signiant's CDM capabilities are best understood by categorizing them into the four major requirements for effective automation of file-based workflows:
Centralized Web-based Management
- Policy based network traffic control
- Business-based policy prioritization
- Tracking, scheduling, reporting and auditing
- Multi-Manager job initiation and file movement
- Certified delivery, Data confidentiality and integrity
- Multiple operating system support
- Dashboard status views
- High Availability and Warm Stand-by Manager solutions
- Template based job creation and execution of data movement in conformance with business policies
Security
- Secure file delivery
- Data confidentiality and integrity
- SSL, TLS Cryptography
- Mutual authentication using x.509
- Selectable payload encryption (AES 256/128/64)
- Certified delivery using Public Key Infrastructure
- Firewall traversal
- Network resiliency including file "check-pointing"
Automation
- Industry-standard applications including watch folders, encoding, watermarking, transcoding, content play-out and distribution
- Integration with common media applications and flexible modeling of custom production workflows
- SOAP interface, web services enabled
Acceleration
- WAN transport acceleration including protocol failover
- Bandwidth management
- Advanced data differencing techniques, dramatically reducing the amount of data to be transferred
- Carrier grade reliability and resiliency
- Minimization of data (compression for some file types) and round-trip delays caused by network latency
- Latency compensation through optimization of application and transport layers (e.g., adaptive window sampling, selective acknowledgment)
- Automatic restarts with file check-pointing after network disruptions
CDM Components
Central Media Manager: Provides a centralized web based User Interface for operators and administrators to build workflows, schedule jobs, monitor progress and report on media assets as they move through the Signiant network.
Media Server Agents: Application software designed to run on enterprise class servers that execute Signiant jobs including WAN accelerated file transport and other business policies set up by the CMM.
Media Desktop Agents: Centrally controlled by the CMM, the Media Desktop Agents interoperate with desktop software (NLE, Transcoding etc.) to provide WAN accelerated file transport between desktop applications.
CDM Software Modules
The flexibility and power of CDM can be realized by installing a variety of software modules on the Central Media Manager (CMM) to work along with Media Server Agents or Desktop Agents. The following modules are included in the CMM:
Administrator and Reporter: Using the Web based user interface, this module enables administrators to perform the set-up, configuration, scheduling, business policy management and job prioritization in CDM.
Customizer SDK: includes example workflow templates allowing users to build or modify existing jobs, workflows or even user interface selections to meet specific business needs. Also included is the software development kit (SDK) for creating customized components which can be used to build media workflows.
Media Mover: enables bi-directional accelerated file transfer between 2 or more locations using a variety of transport mechanisms including UDP, TCP, FTP or HTTP. Also includes a variety of security, file check-pointing and certified delivery options.
Universal Transport Adapter: a module that allows the CMM to control and track jobs using different transport technologies including FTP or SmartJog.
Additional Transport and SDK options include:
Media Exchange (MX): Java based web application for ad-hoc WAN accelerated file transfers. Utilizing the acceleration features and transport technology in Signiant's Agents, MX is effective for quickly moving user or field generated rich media content to and from any location with a broadband connection.
Content Transfer Engine (SDK): Provides the ability for customers to use Signiant's Java Transfer engine technology for integration into a customers existing web server environment to securely accelerate file uploads and downloads from a desktop computer.
To download the CDM brochure, please click here.