Item: IBM Aspera on Cloud
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Aspera on Cloud

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Aspera is being used to exchange Broadcast video files along various metadata files and auxiliary files among the European Broadcasting Union members. We have about 25 contributing members from different places in Europe and even from Japan, Canada and other places. We have about 50 members receiving the packages prepared depending on their requests.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Reliability of transfers.
Simplicity of use once well configured.
Availability of specialists to help building solutions.

Cons

UI is not always consistent nor working (drag and drop buggy in certain areas).
Missing contextual help.
Missing some granularity for the activity feature.

Return on Investment

We were able to save time, this was very positive.

Alternatives Considered

Aspera was used by most of our members (but not all), IBM consultancy was able to help for setting up the infrastructure in a couple of hours. This was quick and effective. We were able also to use quickly the ASPERA API with external tools to make exchanges between Aspera sites.

Maximum Speed

We did not analyse the actual transfer rates as this was not the main criteria for us. Indeed the transfers were fast and we were able to launch many transfers at the same time (some were queued). At the end, all the transfers were completed after some hours. It was interesting to be able to launch all the transfers at once and see the day after that all has arrived perfectly.

Big Data Transfers

As already explained, we have transferred large files (typically 20Gb but some were larger). We expected that it would be okay and it was. The uploads and the downloads were executed from all over Europe and from overseas locations like Japan, Canada, Russia.
The transfers were not an issue at all. The issues that we have had were more related to how to organize correctly the exchanges with the right contacts.

Built-In Security

Concerning access rights, the system is not as simple as it could be. If you need to set up the system or just a workspace, it is not easy to get the right information depending on the context. Understanding the sharing possibilities for instance is not straightforward. Public, private, Members of workspaces, these notions should be explained within the Web interface.
Also Rights are not effective immediately, you need to logout/login to see changes which could bring confusion (especially if you are not aware of this).

Likelihood to Recommend

For large file exchange Aspera is great and you can count on it to get what you have sent. You can track its use and the progress of all transfers.

Unfortunately, some companies are using alternative solutions as Signiant and all technologies are not communicating directly.

Simple case, it would be great to have an FTP connector to avoid in some circumstances to have to get files from a FTP server to a personal computer to then reupload to Aspera, or the same to upload on a FTP server. This could be a degraded mode (in term of performances) but would be very convenient.

IBM Aspera on Cloud Feature Ratings

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

Aspera - the right system for large file transfers