NAB 2020 Preview
Ryan Salazar finds out more from Dominic Harland for Broadcast Beat
Ryan Salazar:
I'm Ryan Salazar with NAB Show Live and I'm so excited about the 2020 NAB Show because, well there's toys everywhere, technology, best practice discussions and here's an expert himself - Dominic Harland, CEO and CTO at GB Labs. How’re you doing sir?
Dominic Harland:
Very good, thank you Ryan. Very good.
Ryan Salazar:
It's great to be with you and great to chat with you again, so I've noticed that GB Labs, your logo underneath it, has “Intelligent Storage” - tell us about that.
Dominic Harland:
Okay, so with our central storage systems we've noticed many, many years ago actually, that you have to really control the performance from the disks, and we are in a unique position. We can understand all of what's required from us and asked of us from the various systems on the network, and we're then balancing that with the characteristics of SSD, NVMe or hard drive underneath so making live, intelligent decisions on who gets what, based on, not only a priority, but also what is usefully needed across the network, and that was the fundamental change-point of when we started tagging ourselves, if you like, with “Intelligent Storage”, and we've developed a number of other technologies on top of that since.
Ryan Salazar:
Well you guys are certainly leaders in our industry, and you must be very proud of what you've built over the years. I think it's very exciting as, of course we're all about NAB Show, what can we expect to see from GB Labs this year at the show?
Dominic Harland:
This year we’re bringing our latest Analytics Centre to market, and this is giving users a fantastic view into what's actually going on, on their networks, and with their storage.
We've had a like a one “pane of glass” view of what's going on for the last year or two, and we've upped that, there's a lot of requirements now in the industry to have traceability and tracking, and we've introduced that into the Analytics Centre, and we'll be demonstrating that at NAB, so you can see the things from who's using what files - how much data they are consuming, where it's going to, etc.
Ryan Salazar:
We interview a lot of exhibitors, there's about 1700 I believe, and it's interesting the crossover into other industries that many of these of these exhibitors have. We spoke with another company yesterday, they deal a lot with SAP integration and SAP is dealing with some serious enterprise technology, database technology for the most part, so your technology, how does it benefit folks in corporate America? Let's think of medical or even defence?
Dominic Harland:
Yeah, these days the Media and Entertainment business is, I guess, the core part of of our business historically, but there are so many different companies using media and they're all experiencing the same challenges with media, and really, anybody who's using media has the same issues that, within media we very rarely want a whole file. And that whole process of how that data is moved around networks or workstations with an organisation is very different to normal IT data.
We do have, in fact actually, we started off doing military products and we still have military customers, medical is a big market for us as well, but it's all media specific, and what our products do particularly well for those industries who are not used to typical media entertainment is, they shine a clear light on using standard technology. We're all NAS based, so the the concept of our product is very easy to grasp, and to integrate, but obviously we're delivering the requirements specifically that media requires. What we're doing for those industries, is we’re making it very simple for their IT guys to integrate into their corporate networks, such as; Active Directory and all the rest of the stuff that they’re used to, but giving them the power that they require for media.
Ryan Salazar:
Very nice all right so every time I talk with somebody in one of these interviews about NAB Show, I always want to ask, you've been going any be show for a long time Dominic, is there a cool restaurant or cool part of town, I have never been to Old Town believe it or not - I don't know how that happened, I've been going to NAB for ten years! Guess I'm working too much when I'm out there. Our readers have been sending us suggestions so, a recent suggestion was Yellowtail at The Bellagio, I'm not sure what kind of food they have but do you have a place that you'd like to hang out at the show while you're at the show?
Dominic Harland:
I do and you've put me on the spot because I can't remember the name of the place actually the Bellagio has it has a great little place actually called “Noodles” which I like but that's just because it's usually quick and easy to get into, with decent food. There is a fantastic Thai restaurant just off the strip and, for the life of me I can't remember the name of it, but I think having been for probably the best part of 20 years now, my favourite place honestly is probably the journey back home.
Ryan Salazar:
Exactly, except for that you have to fly a “red-eye”, at least for me, going back to the to the East Coast. Alright, awesome, I can't wait to see you guys Dominic Harland - CEO and CTO at GB Labs. We're going to see you at booth SL5324 at the 2020 NAB Show.