Does It Actually Work and How Fast Is It… Really?
An Aspera Review.
Having been in the IT business since dirt, I have seen the latest and greatest technology promotions come and go. Like many of you, I have suffered all the slide presentations only to find the product rarely works as smoothly out-of-the-box as the presentation shows. With that in mind, here’s my Aspera review.
In regards to the Aspera fast file transfer protocol, I have been wonderfully surprised. The products do exactly what they hype. And since we use this product in our office, I have become increasing impatient with slow file transfers. For instance, we had to rebuild an office laptop this week (mine) and needed to download several apps that I use on a daily basis. Should be a simple process? How long does it take to download a simple software application plugin – apparently for Adobe — it takes half a day? Like most of you, I am up to my neck in work and I don’t have time for my system to be down or to sit around waiting for the software packages to download.
Allow me to cite another instance. Our insurance carrier (one of the well-known “big boys”) wants an annual audit of our workman’s comp insurance plan. To help make this easy, they have an on-line system. It all works until you have to upload copies of you W3’s and it then falls apart. I won’t go into the details how we solved this issue, but it involved a help desk guy, extensive wait times, and a fax machine, which we no longer use. But if you have to do that for every audit – not good. And it took a lot of my time. This company would benefit from using this new fast file transfer protocol. (They could also use a BPM analysis to upgrade their processes but that’s another blog).
Demonstrating this advancement in technology is very simple. No scripted or canned presentations. However, if you insist, we do have one. It is about six frames and takes about five minutes – ten if you actually read the bullet points and ask questions.
We prefer to load the software on your system and run a side by side comparison using your files. We clock the transfers and show you the speed difference. You then have 30 days to use the demo copy in-house.
So, to answer the question, Does it really work? Absolutely. And how fast is it? Pretty Darn Fast.
In my next blog, I will tell you about how we used this new transfer protocol for transferring live video over the internet using an off-the-shelf hot spot. We can send these live videos to anywhere in the US (or world) with less than 2 seconds latency. And we are working to reduce the two seconds. It is amazing technology. Our lead on this project is Jeanie. She has written an article with more technical details regarding how this new technology works.
Related: How to Move Big Data Quickly
If you would like to know more and would prefer a relaxed/no hassle sales approach – visit our Aspera page and contact us. We are actually using the technology in our office and can provide you an end user’s perspective as well as all the “gated” white papers and the demos available on the Aspera website.
Until next time, “Good night, Mrs. Calabash – wherever every you are.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Travis Rattan is the founder and president of Rattan Consulting. As a Colonel in the US Air Force and a CPA with over 30 years of private and public experience in the information technology industry, Travis brings a business perspective to the IT conversation.
nice article