Sony Pictures, Sony Online Entertainment and Sony Pictures Imageworks Among Sony Business Units Tapping Isilon to Power Breakthroughs in Digital Entertainment Production and Distribution

Sony Pictures, Sony Online Entertainment and Sony Pictures Imageworks Among Sony Business Units Tapping Isilon to Power Breakthroughs in Digital Entertainment Production and Distribution

Clustered Storage Deployed to Accelerate Creation, Management and Delivery of Digital Content to Consumers Worldwide

SEATTLE, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Isilon(R) Systems (NASDAQ:ISLN) , the leader in clustered storage, today announced that Sony Music Network, Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures Digital Authoring Center, and Sony Pictures Imageworks are among multiple Sony business units that have deployed Isilon's clustered storage systems to help unlock the business opportunity associated with consumer demand for next-generation digital entertainment. Isilon IQ, featuring its OneFS(R) operating system software, creates a single, highly-scalable, easy-to-use, shared pool of high performance storage to accelerate the digital media lifecycle and speed content delivery and distribution.

"At Sony Pictures Imageworks, we utilize an all-digital workflow to deliver state-of-the-art visual effects production and character animation. This unique production environment produces massive amounts of digital content, which in turn necessitates a high-performance storage solution optimized to easily and cost-effectively scale in parallel with our rapid data growth," said Bill Villarreal, Vice President of Technology, Sony Pictures Imageworks. "Isilon IQ provides the high data performance, scalability and ease of use we require to power specific areas of our data-intensive visual effects pipeline."

"With Sony Blu-ray Discs, Sony Pictures Entertainment is offering the next-generation of digital home entertainment by delivering our audience the most advanced visual experience available. However, to create such leading-edge content, we must operate an intense, high-performance encoding and multiplexing environment to transform high-definition digital video into Sony Blu-ray products," said Dee Jordan, Executive Director of Engineering, Sony Pictures Entertainment. "Our use of Isilon clustered storage enables us to provide our content processing applications with the high data throughput and reliability that is vital to the successful creation of Sony Blu-ray."

"The world of digital content is now a reality, marked by rising consumer demand for new digital media and the proliferation of formats and devices for consuming everything from movies, to video games to personal photos," said Brett Goodwin, Vice President of Marketing & Business Development, Isilon Systems. "When we first designed our Isilon IQ clustered storage systems, we recognized this tipping point was fast approaching and engineered our products to specifically meet the demands of the digital content explosion. The use of Isilon IQ for data and image intense environments, highlighted by Sony's Digital Authoring Center, state-of-the-art Imageworks visual effects and character animation studio, is another proof point of Isilon IQ's ability to enable companies to maximize the widespread growth and adoption of digital media and entertainment."

Isilon IQ has been deployed across the entire digital media workflow -- from creation to storage to access -- for multiple divisions of Sony, providing high-performance and scalability to meet the growing digital asset needs of each company.

   -- Sony Music Network - A provider of a wide range of digital music      consumer services, Sony Music Network deployed Isilon IQ to power its      Sony Music Online Japan website, a high volume, online digital music      delivery system.  By unifying its massive library of music onto one,      easy-to-use, high performance storage solution, Sony Music Network can      better access and deliver content to consumers and fully maximize the      opportunities of its growing business.    -- Sony Online Entertainment - Sony Online Entertainment is a recognized      worldwide leader in massive, multiplayer online games, with millions of      gamers around the globe enjoying the company's products.  Its critical      patch-delivery system, a cross-country network of servers used to      deliver game updates, code corrections and other important additions,      uses Isilon IQ to power its patch distribution operations across the      United States.  By using Isilon IQ in conjunction with Isilon's      SyncIQ(TM), asynchronous data replication software, Sony Online      Entertainment is able to seamlessly store and deliver patches from its      California headquarters to server locations throughout the US, ensuring      its consumers enjoy a world-class gaming experience.    -- Sony Pictures Digital Authoring Center - A global leader in motion      picture production and distribution, television programming and      syndication, home video acquisition and distribution, Sony Pictures      Entertainment is using Isilon IQ to support its groundbreaking Blu-ray      Disc creation and delivery operations.  To create Blu-ray discs, Sony      Pictures must first take master video formats of digital media and      encode the data into the compressed Blu-ray format.  Once in Blu-ray      format, the content must then be multiplexed to integrate video, audio,      subtitles and menu features to provide a complete consumer product.      Both these processes require extremely high data performance and by      using Isilon IQ to power these operations, Sony Pictures is able to      accelerate this intense workflow and speed time from project outset to      completion.    -- Sony Pictures Imageworks - An Academy Award(R) winning visual effects      and character animation studio, Sony Imageworks has deployed Isilon IQ      to power its film scanning and recording pipelines, video creation, and      particle simulation applications. Using three separate Isilon IQ      clusters, Sony Imageworks is able to streamline its workflow, maximize      the performance of its data processing applications, and meet critical      deadlines for its in-demand projects.  With its high data performance      and unique clustered architecture, Isilon IQ enables Sony Imageworks to      satisfy immense throughput requirements and easily and reliably expand      its storage without any downtime.  Powered by OneFS(R), Isilon IQ      delivers the industry's first single file system that unifies and      provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of      digital content, eliminating the cost and complexity barriers of      traditional storage architectures.  OneFS is a unified operating system      software layer that powers all of Isilon's award-winning IQ family of      clustered storage systems including the Isilon IQ 200, 1920, 3000,      6000, 9000, Accelerator, and EX 6000 and 9000.  Isilon also provides a      robust suite of software applications including SnapshotIQ(R),      SmartConnect(TM), SmartQuotas, MigrationIQ(TM) and SyncIQ(TM) that      leverage OneFS and clustered storage, providing the highest levels of      data protection and automated data management.    About Isilon Systems  

Isilon Systems (NASDAQ:ISLN) is the worldwide leader in clustered storage systems and software for digital content and unstructured data, enabling enterprises to transform data into information -- and information into breakthroughs. Isilon's award-winning family of IQ clustered storage systems combines Isilon's OneFS(R) operating system software with the latest advances in industry-standard hardware to deliver modular, pay-as-you-grow, enterprise-class storage systems. Isilon's clustered storage solutions speed access to critical business information while dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of storing it. Information about Isilon can be found at http://www.isilon.com/.

The names of companies mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Source: Isilon Systems

CONTACT: Lucas Welch of Isilon Systems, +1-206-315-7621,
lucas.welch@isilon.com, or Kristen Leon of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide,
+1-415-547-7027, kristenl@waggeneredstrom.com

Web site: http://www.isilon.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment