Amplidata and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Build Live Video Archive of Montreux Jazz Festival Legends

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Amplidata, innovator in unbreakable object-based storage technology, and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), partner for the digitalization of the Montreux Jazz Festival archives, announced today that they are building a disk-based archive for the entire digital video collection of concerts recorded since the Montreux Jazz Festival's inception 45 years ago.

Data archiving has become a focal point of debate in the storage industry, and customers are beginning to demand more accessible and affordable systems. EPFL has embarked on a project with Montreux Sounds, curator of the archives, to digitize more than 5,000 hours of concerts. Future recordings of the festival will also be stored on the infrastructure. This activity is part of the "Montreux Jazz digital project", a cultural and educational initiative to safeguard this heritage and to emphasize its value in scientific and artistic projects. It is continuously financed by companies or private entities wishing to associate themselves to this unique initiative.

"We see an increase in organizations needing enhanced support for large scale data archiving, and current market offerings simply don't make the cut for a variety of reasons," said Wim De Wispelaere, CEO of Amplidata. "Using Amplidata's solutions, an organization like Montreux Sounds, can now store and serve decades' worth of video footage as well as providing a resource unlike any other to artists, scientists and students."

In order to maintain a comprehensive history of the Festival's music, Amplidata's storage platform, AmpliStor, meets and exceeds an extensive list of critical features including: a long life cycle; low energy consumption; immediate access to the data; high security; easy replication mechanisms; and built-in redundancy to prevent loss of data. Additionally, EPFL can also prevent catastrophic data loss as the platform offers a much more reliable alternative to RAID-based systems—ensuring that the priceless videos will be protected from even the most unforeseeable of events.

"This partnership provided a fantastic opportunity to develop an innovative large-scale digital archiving solution that will store over 5000 hours of invaluable video footage. The result is a ground-breaking platform that will support the demands of the Montreux Jazz Festival's fans for years to come," said Alexandre Delidais, director of operations and development for EPFL's role in the project. "Soon, the Active Archive platform will be duplicated at Montreux Sounds making many of the concerts available at the Montreux Jazz Cafe outlets – something that historically could not be accomplished with existing archiving systems."

With access to these archives currently on the EPFL campus and at the Montreux Jazz Cafe outlets, anyone can study, discover or just enjoy an unprecedented amount of historic audio and video content. The Montreux Jazz Cafe is a chain of international restaurants and lounges where the customers can experience the Montreux Jazz world through its archival footage while enjoying a meal or a drink.

Amplidata's AmpliStor has proven to be an ideal solution for digital video archives, it provides the performance needed to stream an immense amount of content over the Internet while maintaining an incredibly low total cost of ownership that comes in about four times less expensive than competitive solutions," said Dominique Pitteloud, partner at Endeavour Vision, investor in Amplidata. "This collaboration between EPFL and Amplidata provides yet another strong validation for the AmpliStor solution."

The Amplidata solution will be available for a full demonstration at SNW 2011 in Orlando, October 10-13. Please see us at the Hands-On-Lab.

About Amplidata

Amplidata was founded in 2008 when a team of storage veterans started to develop the technology that would become the foundation of AmpliStor, an Optimized Object Storage system for unstructured data. The technology provides the highest storage reliability and availability levels at the lowest possible cost. AmpliStor scales beyond petabytes and requires 50-70 percent less storage capacity to protect data compared to traditional solutions.

The Amplidata team consists of storage experts who also helped build the success of DataCenter Technologies (acquired by Symantec in 2005) and Dedigate (acquired by Terremark in 2005). The development team is responsible for patent-pending distributed storage innovations. Amplidata has its operational headquarters at the Innovation Center in IT Valley in Lochristi, near Gent, Belgium. R&D facilities are located in Belgium and India, sales and support are represented in a number of countries in Europe and North America. Investors in Amplidata include Endeavour Vision, Hummingbird Ventures and Swisscom Ventures. More information can be found at www.amplidata.com.

About EPFL

EPFL is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology. Like its sister institution in Zurich, ETHZ, it has three core missions: training, research and technology transfer. Associated with several specialized research institutes, the two Ecoles Polytechniques (Institutes of Technology) form the EPF domain, which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Home Affairs. With over 350 laboratories and research groups on campus, EPFL is one of Europe's most innovative and productive scientific institutions. The School's unique structure fosters trans-disciplinary research and promotes partnerships with other institutions. It continuously combines fundamental research and engineering.

About Montreux Jazz Festival and Montreux Sounds

Founded by Claude Nobs in 1967, over the years the Montreux Jazz Festival has become an unmissable event for music fans in Switzerland and around the world. Its stages have been graced by all of music's greats, from Miles Davis to Ray Charles and from David Bowie to Prince. Whereas Jazz constitutes the Festival's historic core, other styles of music were quickly integrated into the Festival, bound together by a common thread of mutual curiosity and enthusiasm. Having made its reputation with its ambitious programming choices, the Montreux Jazz Festival offers musicians an ideal platform and an intimate setting for the duration of its two weeks.

Montreux Sounds SA was founded in 1973 by Claude Nobs with the aim of safeguarding and maintaining the Montreux Jazz archives.

About Endeavour Vision

Endeavour Vision combines a team of experienced venture capital professionals responsible for investments in over 80 companies in 12 countries in Technology and Life Sciences since 1989. Our firm targets companies that have the potential to become global leaders. Beyond access to capital, Endeavour Vision brings years of experience, expertise and network to its entrepreneurs, plus a passion for success. Recent investments in the technology sector include Amplidata, Paper.li, Spartoo and Retailo. For more information, go to www.endavourvision.com

SOURCE Amplidata