The following press release went out today; if you have not stumbled across it in your travels, have a read! Naturally, we are quite happy with the announcement. Several of our staff are game enthusiasts, and the gaming industry is full of interesting people (like those at SEGA). It works out well that our products are so useful for game development studios. On a related note, we’re down at the Game Developers’ Conference (GDC) in Austin as we speak. Swing by booth 6333 NH.

The press release:

San Francisco, CA March 25, 2009 — Unlimi-Tech Software, the pioneer in accelerated file transfers is pleased to announce the selection of FileCatalyst Workflow by SEGA® Corporation. The deployment of FileCatalyst Workflow allows SEGA to successfully manage and transfer game development files, including game-supporting multimedia files, raw and binary game code.

The FileCatalyst Workflow software application is a unique file-based workflow solution that offers comprehensive tracking and management of files as they are processed through a digital workflow. The uniqueness of the application is exemplified by its ability to accelerate file transfers as they move from one project node to the other. Advanced acceleration algorithms allow for improved bandwidth utilization and data reduction – leading to file transfer rates of 100x faster than traditional FTP.

“We were looking for a solution that would consolidate our disparate file transfer systems into a single file-based workflow application. Our main goal was to improve our productivity and efficiency through this application,” said Jake Salgado, Director of IT, SEGA of America, “We selected FileCatalyst technology because of the speed gains it offered – previously it would take longer than a day to transfer our project files, now we can do it in hours. The time we shave off in our transfers translate to immense productivity gains when you realize we have a global work force in different time zones.”

FileCatalyst® acceleration technology is completely software-based, and is designed to overcome network performance bottlenecks to maximize use of available bandwidth. This technology is packaged into FileCatalyst Workflow, providing file-based workflow. The process is completely customizable and offers automated and scheduling features, email notifications and LDAP/Active Directory integration.

“We are pleased to be an integral part of the applications deployed by the SEGA development group,” said Chris Bailey, CEO of Unlimi-Tech Software, “The gaming industry is experiencing huge issues relating to delivery of the massive amounts of content in today’s games. FileCatalyst allows game development companies to minimize file transfer times, and thus improve productivity across the game development workflow.”

About SEGA of America

SEGA of America, Inc. is the American arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. SEGA of America Web site is located at www.sega.com

About Unlimi-Tech Software

Located in Ottawa, Canada, Unlimi-Tech Software is the creator of FileCatalyst®, the world’s leading file transfer solution. Founded in 2000, the company has more than seven hundred and fifty commercial and government clients. FileCatalyst® technology is a software-based solution designed to accelerate and optimize file transfers across global networks. FileCatalyst® is immune to the effects that latency and packet loss have on traditional file transfer methods like FTP, HTTP or CIFS. FileCatalyst® addresses these issues for enterprise WAN, satellite and wireless communications, media and content providers, and government and military organizations.

For more information, visit the FileCatalyst website at: www.filecatalyst.com

When we launched the new blog using Wordpress, one of the long-term goals was to eventually migrate some of our articles from the old blog to this new home. One subject that comes up from time to time is the decision between a WAN appliance and a file transfer solution. Many organizations approach this as a “one or the other”, which it need not be; they can coexist and ultimately serve different purposes. Other times, the feeling is that if there is already some sort of “data acceleration” in place, that a file transfer solution would be redundant. Not necessarily so! Well, no point re-writing an already excellent article; here it is as originally written:

Over the past few years,I have encountered a lot of companies that already do WAN optimization and do not see a need to implement additional software for accelerating file transfer. The fact is, WAN optimization is great depending on what you are trying to accomplish; however, there are cases where the only requirement is file transfer. WAN optimization on its own does an OK job. But if you want real performance, combining a software solution with your WAN optimization appliance can sometimes yield staggering results.

At a recent trade show we spoke with a company called Expand Networks about areas where we could complement what they do, and vise versa. They explained that they not only do acceleration, but also advanced differencing and compression at the block level. This reduces the amount of data across the network, and does a pretty good job of accelerating it. When used in conjunction with an FTP client, this can greatly improve file transfer speeds, and even surpass line speed.

We decided it would be worth getting our hands on a couple of Expand boxes and see what happens when we run FileCatalyst in conjunction with them. What we found was that for pure file transfer we were able to get at least double the throughput of the Expand box alone, and much more when we increased the network latency and packet loss. There was a point where the TCP acceleration did not do as good a job as FileCatalyst with regards to keeping the link full of data.

Because FileCatalyst uses UDP and can increase/decrease transmission rate depending on congestion it was able to detect the reduced traffic across the WAN appliances (due to its optimization techniques) and continue to increase the speed until the link was filled. FileCatalyst also compressed large blocks of data before transmission. Expand was then able to compress each packet even further using its advanced block level compression. When the file is modified slightly, and sent a second time, FileCatalyst will send the differences at the byte level. Expand then does the same at the block level resulting in a further reduction in data. The end result is that optimizations take place at the byte level and at the block level, and FileCatalyst’s immunity to high RTT and packet loss allowed this optimized data to flow at maximum possible speed.

On a network monitoring device the actual data across the line was optimal, that is on a T1 with RTT of 350ms and 1% packet loss, roughly 1500 Kbps of data was being sent. But the actual throughput was much higher depending on the type of data, and how many times it was sent across. In some cases 10 times higher than line speed. However in all cases, the speed was faster using FileCatalyst and the WAN appliance, than just the WAN appliance on its own.

In addition to the speed gains, the FileCatalyst software suite offers a host of application level features that just aren’t there when using other 3rd party file transfer applications with a WAN appliance. Features like scheduling, auto-reconnection and resume, on the fly compression, deltas, and bandwidth scheduling. Of course no other file transfer software does a better job of maximizing actual data throughput than FileCatalyst.

For any company that already has a WAN optimization appliance, and wishes to add automation, reliability and further accelerate and optimize file transfers, they should strongly consider a software solution such as FileCatalyst.

To read more about accelerating file transfer with the FileCatalyst family of products visit www.filecatalyst.com

—
Chris Bailey is co-founder and CEO of Unlimi-Tech Software Inc., makers of software solutions that are reinventing file transfer in the enterprise.
Written by Chris Bailey on July 29, 2007 7:19 PM

Two of the problems we address with our accelerated file transfer solutions are security (offering SSL and AES encryption, as well as safe authentication methods such as LDAPs) and of course speed. By addressing speed of delivery, we also allow companies that would formerly record data to media such as DVD to instead use digital delivery so that their data doesn’t get…. misplaced. Thinking about these two ills that we offer a cure for inspired me to dig into some recent breaches of security throughout the world. Some of these could have been avoided by using a secure file transfer solution… some were just plain old human error. All of them, a little shocking! Number One is current as of yesterday and is quite a doozy!

Without further adieu, my top ten security breaches related to file transfer:

10 ) New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts. For 8 days in May, an unsecured document was exposed on the agency’s FTP site on the state’s computer server.

9 ) Port of Seattle Six CDs missing from the ID Badging office at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

8 ) Lexmark International – The employee personal data was inadvertently exposed, it included Social Security numbers, dates of birth, along with names and addresses.

7 ) HM Revenue and Customs, UK sent two discs containing the entire child benefit database… and the discs got lost

6 ) Ubisoft Leaks New Game Information Via FTP

5 ) Dreamhost exposes thousands of FTP passwords: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/06/06/security-breach/

4 ) 8,700 stolen FTP credentials found on the public Internet

3 ) Virgin Media collects customer banking details on CD, then loses it

2 ) Microsoft FTP Server Leak : a 1 GB database containing millions of names and mailing addresses was exposed to the public internet

And the number ONE recent security breach:

1 ) Sensitive information about Marine One, President Barack Obama’s helicopter, was leaked through file-sharing software

If you don’t want to see your company name on my top-ten list, then consider FileCatalyst for your next IT infrastructure purchase!