OmniBus Systems, the award-winning provider of comprehensive broadcast automation and content management solutions, announced a partnership with Aspera, Inc., creator of breakthrough high-speed file transfer technology fasp 2.0. Together, their systems will deliver high-speed digital content to OmniBus iTX, an IT-based broadcast automation and content management system that is designed to be file format and distribution method agnostic. 

"This strategic partnership between OmniBus and Aspera is a natural extension of the large overlap in our customer deployments within the media and entertainment industries," said Mike Oldham, CEO of OmniBus Systems. "We look forward to helping our mutual customers overcome the challenges they face today in realizing file-based workflows, by combining Aspera's transport technology with our broadcast automation in a fully integrated solution."  

OmniBus Systems' current customers include industry leaders in broadcast and content provisioning. Many of these customers have large archives of content that they would like to repurpose. A common challenge is transporting the archive's digitally encoded content from one location to another in order to deliver the media via various distribution methods — from video on demand, to online aggregation — or, in order to synchronize the archive between sites. Using traditional FTP technology to transfer these large broadcast files across a WAN is time consuming and wastes bandwidth, making it almost impossible to move content from one location to another in a timely and predictable manner. 

"Aspera's transport technology allows users to ingest content into an iTX system over the WAN, at full bandwidth capacity, regardless of network distance or conditions, and provides precise control of transfer speeds and bandwidth prioritization. Similarly, synchronization of iTX archives between distant sites can be done at maximum speed, in predictable times," added Oldham. 

"Many of our broadcast customers utilize iTX systems in their broadcast operations," commented Cary Capece, senior vice president of sales and business development for Aspera. "We are pleased to be able to extend the capabilities of iTX with high-speed transport, and look forward to collaborating with OmniBus on joint solutions."

The iTX solution has integrated the Aspera software platform, allowing customers to utilize Aspera file transfer natively within iTX. With the purchase of a new component for Aspera, the functionality is enabled on the iTX side within the iTX core framework server. Customers can purchase and install Aspera software directly on the content distribution server. As a file transfer is initiated from a remote location into iTX, the iTX desktop tracks progress, throughput and other details of the content movement for a completely integrated view.