SVG Sit-Down: Scale Logic CEO Bob Herzan on the Promise of AI When Teamed With Network-Attached Storage

More than tagging, artificial intelligence offers understanding

Scale Logic’s core business is building infrastructure for content creators. Diving deeper reveals how the company delivers on the business of storage for sports with a workflow for data management, preservation, and production. Hence, the constant need for efficient storage, streamlined production workflows, and reliable backup and archive systems. The nice thing about network-attached storage (NAS) is that the content is accessible by the network. Scale Logic CEO Bob Herzan sat down with SVG to discuss what AI can do with all those terabytes of content sitting on storage and how that can significantly impact the sports-production business.

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Scale Logic’s Bob Herzan: “It’s the difference between tagging and understanding. Tagging is not what CaraOne does. It understands, including emotions and abstract things and logs all of those things. Understanding is more than what people said; it’s what they meant.”

Let’s start at the top, what does Scale Logic provide in general and in specific for the sports market?
We’re known for data storage and having a NAS product line for 30 years that serves the media and entertainment market, with sports being an important part of that. We work on both the content-creation and distribution sides, regardless of market.

Our solution set is 70% of our business, with a comprehensive line of hardware and software — all tested in our interoperability lab. That lab was and still is a big investment that allows all of our apps to be integrated and our development partners to tap in and do testing and customers to do POCs. Our depth of product offerings means that we can be very consultative to small, medium, or enterprise scale for the industry, not forcing anything on anybody. We look at your needs and requirements, so the solution fits the budget. Our team supports 24/7 through our NOCs. Plus, we provide additional resources within the facility to make sure it stays up. Not just hardware but software for workflow efficiencies.

The other 30% is service and support provider on other people’s equipment. For example, a large media organization can have a great deal of legacy equipment that’s costing an arm and a leg to keep operating. We come in and save about 75% off the support contract from the original manufacturer. On an enterprise scale, that’s a lot of money.

But our goal isn’t to extend the life of the product. Our motivation is to bridge the gap to the next step and bring in a next-generation refresh, whether that be from us or the original manufacturer — we’re storage-agnostic. To do that we use data analytics to see what’s stale, cold, has duplicates, has triplicates, quadruplicates, what’s compliant, and what’s non-compliant. We help with the decision on how to handle IT-asset disposal. We do the buyback. For some large enterprises, that could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment. That’s a nice ROI on their legacy gear. And if not on-premises, we can do the data wiping.

What has your business seen in the past couple of years with sports?
We’re focused on the North American market, and sports organizations are investing money. I’m talking about big pro and collegiate teams in multiple areas: marketing, production, and venues. Plus, there’s quite a bit of supporting legacy gear, especially tape support with content moving to the cloud or private cloud.

For example, in solutions, we have the Chicago Bears, Carolina Hurricanes, Charlotte Hornets, and Clemson University. In services, we take care of the NHL and the Las Vegas Raiders.

Last September, you announced that Scale Logic became the exclusive North American VAD for German firm ObviousFuture and its CaraOne AI-powered media-search and content-management platform. Tell us how AI plays into this.
The VAD North American relationship is more of a partnership for the AI engine, helping to drive development for various testing in our interoperability lab. Sports is a natural progression for AI: finding tools that drive efficiency into the workflow while driving down expenses. The problem has always been that AI was cumbersome and expensive, requiring cloud services.

That’s the difference with Obvious Future’s CaraOne. Customers don’t want to push content to the cloud. [They want to] keep their content on-premises. [With CaraOne,] they do.

Distributed by Scale Logic, ObviousFuture’s CaraOne AI-based search platform deploys an on-premises secure server.

CaraOne as AI is different. Over five years of development, it has been taught how to understand the world and understand everything it sees. It’s so much more than transcripts and facial recognition. It understands context, something sad or happy. This changes the dynamic of the AI. Editors can look for the emotion in a clip for an edit, the theme they are looking for. For sports, that means an excited player, angry coach, spitting coach, a guy shoving a hot dog in his mouth. CaraOne sees it all. Instead of a person’s adding 100 words of metadata to a clip, CaraOne can do thousands.

It’s the difference between tagging and understanding. Tagging is not what CaraOne does. It understands, including emotions and abstract things, and logs all of those things. Understanding is more than what people said; it’s what they meant. CaraOne understands the media because it understands the world. And we saw what that could bring to the sports market.

What has been the interest in AI content discovery?
For me, CaraOne is really smart. We saw a huge opportunity in the sports market. What does CaraOne know about sports? It knows what you teach it. Our goal this year is to get input from the sports market and run some POCs and train for specific sports. CaraOne is already solving 80% of the problem. And we want partners for CaraOne to become an incredible resource for our customers.

It’s the one product that I have that can open up a conversation with customers. AI has such a good and bad feeling for the customer: fear and excitement. There’s good and bad AI for the marketplace, and that’s why people want to talk about it.

The biggest thing is that CaraOne is a secure on-premises appliance that’s not reliant on the web. It’s searching the customer’s content only on their production storage.

We’ve had lots of conversations with different sports companies, and they’ve found different use cases for CaraOne: coaching/training, daily/weekly shows. The interest is heavier than any other product I’ve ever introduced in the market.

The reasons are simple. It won’t cost jobs. It guards efficiency by looking, listening, and reading everything in the archive. It saves a lot of money and provides the potential for revenue by licensing specific content.

Trying to understand what CaraOne can do just by reading about it is not the best way to get a feel for what an AI that understands can do. At scalelogicinc.com/ai-content-search, there’s a 2½-minute video from ObviousFuture that illustrates the capabilities of CaraOne, and I highly recommend watching it. Or stop by Scale Logic’s showcase at NAB 2024 Booth SL7113 for the debut of CaraOne.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.