“All the world’s a game,” the Bard might have said, if he’d lived in a time when gaming had overtaken dramatic arts in the entertainment world. But I think we’d all agree: life is much more than an exciting VR game with a spatialized full-3D audio experience.
Living in today’s world is a very serious game, if we imagine the future of humanity to be a sort of a puzzle to be solved by citizens, leaders, scientists and technologists. We call it The Data Games — the effort to grasp, analyze and efficiently use the life-critical data in the vastly expanding global datasphere, in ways that will improve the human experience.
At CES this week, Seagate and our partners are exploring the many facets of The Data Games and how to win them. Check out this video to see how we’re putting The Data Games on display at CES, with a quick booth tour:
Where do The Data Games happen? Everywhere — from your own personal datasphere, to the community you live in, the businesses you work with and the organizations you participate in and benefit from. The continuous generation of data at endpoint mobile devices, appliances, sensors and the Internet of Things. Real-time response to unstructured data, efficiently processed by Edge intelligence that’s expanding rapidly with AI machine learning. Deep and powerful data analyzed via Hyperscale computing data centers, organized and accessed thanks to reliable, available Cloud services. All of these are crucial to humanity’s game plan.
Improving the life of the individual and the community
For every individual, your life in the community is your game. When data is harnessed efficiently, limitless opportunities arise to provoke happiness, eliminate constraints, spare resources, avert disasters, save lives, and fundamentally benefit humankind.
“We care foremost about the value of data and its impact on the human experience,” says Jeff Fochtman, vice president of Global Marketing at Seagate. “The rate-of-change for how data impacts our daily lives is rapid, like something we’ve never seen before, and in fact it will only increase as we see IoT and AI platforms move into scale. More and more, technology will happen around us without us having to interact with it, and this connected fabric can help our lives to be healthier, safer and more convenient.”
Organizations are evolving rapidly by leveraging the potential of data
Likewise, your business is your game. Business segments, government services and organizations are evolving in significant ways because of our increased ability to leverage the potential of data. Your partners and customers want to know you’re harnessing real-time data to deliver the absolute best product or service possible. Data achieves the most competitive results. You can’t afford a delay in processing information.
“Agriculture, healthcare, education, security, telecommunications, energy, transportation, trade — you name it,” says Fochtman. “The use of data is disrupting every industry and segment in the world. Those that find a way to create value out of unstructured data, versus seeing data as a problem to deal with, will win. For the fastest growing and largest companies in the world today, data-enabled revenue-generation is a key component of the foundational strategy.”
“Some business segments are fundamentally built on using data, like weather monitoring which has always been incredibly data-centric but is now seeing amazing new benefits from the deployment of millions of sensors around the world,” Fochtman continues. “Others are still evolving to understand what the end state of data usage will be, like the use of blockchain for the financial industry above and beyond the crypto-currency craze. In both these cases, we see data as foundational to the business model, but they’ll continue to scale differently because of adjacent technologies and monetization.”
The Experience Zone — interactive and live experiences show how we’re unlocking data’s potential
This week at CES, in the Seagate Experience Zone at The Venetian, many of our partners — including Adobe, Blackmagic, CyArk, DJI, Grab Games, ioSafe and Synology — join us to illuminate the countless ways our expansive set of solutions helps people and organizations benefit from data everywhere.
In the Experience Zone, CES-goers find interactive demos and live experiences that show how the latest Seagate and partner technologies are teaming up to unlock the potential of creative workflows, smart home technologies, gaming, edge computing and more. Visitors are right in the middle of the action as they explore a hands-on studio for creative professionals, and a drone stadium. We’ve also unveiled a pavilion called the Datasphere Labs that offers a peek at the near-future advanced technologies that’ll support ever-larger quantities of data with much more efficient performance.
“Seagate is well known for the breakthrough R&D and precision engineering that helps capture, store, manage and access data, but people may not know the degree to which Seagate navigates and develops solutions for entire ecosystems,” explains Fochtman. “Every use for data, from a smartphone to a hyperscale public cloud data center, needs to be holistically designed to maximize the potential of data — and one of the most rewarding parts of our work is partnering with the leading companies in all of these growth industries.”
“Our world is becoming more data-centric, connected and mobile. This means creating, transferring, storing and accessing data quickly and reliably is critical to unlocking the potential of everything — from data created in the field, to data powering self-driving cars, AI personal assistants or virtual and mixed reality experiences,” says Tim Bucher, senior vice president of Seagate consumer solutions. “At Seagate, we’re constantly pursuing innovative ways to address our customer needs so they can gain a competitive edge in whichever field they play.”
Seagate’s ecosystem of solutions help consumers and companies capture the right data where it’s created — and then quickly manage it at the edge, or move it where it’s needed to uncover new business opportunities and deliver new consumer experiences, maximizing human potential.
How are you playing the game?
If all the world’s a game — and you are a player — as a citizen and consumer you want to know your game gear is harnessing real-time data to deliver the absolute best experience possible, to enrich, simplify and improve the quality of your life every day.
As a business or organizational leader, your team consists of well-trained athletes and seasoned coaches. The fans who show up and tune in to your game expect your equipment to be cutting edge not vintage, just like they expect you to harness the best resources to give your team the most competitive advantage in the league.
Will your game be disrupted or disruptive? Whatever your game, Seagate’s aim is to help you process real-time data that drives endless possibilities to maximize human potential.
What’s your next move?
Watch our blog through the rest of this week to learn more about the stories and details we’re sharing at Seagate’s Experience Zone during CES 2018. Data criticality has shifted us to an economy where algorithms act as guides. Data is potential; it’s the commerce of the future. Stay future-proof today by harnessing tomorrow’s data.
Meanwhile, below please check out the new products we’ve announced this week.
Announcing new Seagate and LaCie products
During this week’s CES, adding to our expansive set of solutions especially for consumers and professional creatives, today we announced several new products:
LaCie DJI Copilot
Videographers who want to capture footage in the field can now streamline their on set workflow thanks to the second product offering from Seagate’s strategic partnership with DJI, the world’s leading manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles, which looks to advance data solutions for the UAV ecosystem. The new LaCie DJI Copilot, with design by Neil Poulton, is a complete backup on-set solution — enabling drone users to quickly ingest and review their content in full resolution without a PC or laptop. This changes the game by allowing creative professionals and consumers to playback, copy and manage their drone footage from their mobile device without the hassle of leaving the field or booting up a computer. Users can quickly connect and reference the built-in screen to initiate direct file transfer from an SD card to LaCie DJI Copilot — without the need of a laptop or a mobile network. The Copilot BOSS (Back-up On Set Solution) app by LaCie allows users to playback video in full resolution as well as manage and organize files with their mobile phone or tablet, and a built-in power bank recharges your mobile devices. With 2000GB (2TB) of storage, the LaCie DJI Copilot enables users to easily store up to 65 hours of 4K 30fps video footage and 20K+ RAW photos.
Seagate Fast SSD
In the meantime, on-the-go consumers can keep their files and lives in motion with the new Seagate Fast SSD — an ultra-portable flash drive that teams fast performance of up to 540 MB/s transfer rates, with shock-resistance and USB-C connectivity.
The drive has a sleek, premium design in a compact form factor; it has an aluminum top cover and is about half the length of a smartphone.
“It’s extremely portable,” says Eber Legarreta, product marketing manager in Seagate’s consumer solutions group. “Our included Toolkit software has a mirror function, letting you create a folder within your computer that will always sync back and forth with the drive. You can take your most important files with you at all times.”
The Seagate Fast SSD is available in capacities up to 1TB.
LaCie Rugged Secure
Data security is also a growing concern for anyone using a mobile device. To address this challenge, Seagate is introducing the latest addition to its popular line of LaCie Rugged drives: the LaCie Rugged Secure. Equipped with Seagate Secure™ technology, the Rugged Secure is the first Rugged drive to include hardware encryption. And it’s built to withstand all-terrain extreme conditions from photo shoots in sub-zero temperatures to repeated drops on hard studio floors. This new drive gives creative professionals and other users peace of mind that they can control access to their content.
Disconnecting the Rugged Secure from a computer will automatically lock the drive and access to the data stored on it; the drive remains password-protected via Toolkit software.
“More and more creative professionals are asking for hardware encryption, especially with all of these content breaches making news,” says Clement Barberis, product marketing manager for Seagate’s consumer solutions group. “If you’re on set and you need to ship raw footage to a post-production studio, you want to make sure that no one can access that data without your permission. We’re offering customers another layer of protection for their data.”
David Silva, a senior software product manager at Seagate, said with hardware-based encryption, the Rugged Secure is designed to keep hackers out.
“The password is not stored on the drive,” Silva says. “You can’t snoop the software and try to find the key. You either enter the right key or you don’t.”
Seagate Joy Drive
Another challenge facing many mobile users today is extending the storage and battery life of their smartphones so they can capture, access and view content for longer periods of time. For consumers in China and Indonesia — two countries with some of the highest concentrations of smartphones on the planet — owners of Android mobile devices can significantly extend the battery life and capacity of their smartphone or tablet with the new Seagate Joy Drive. The drive lets users recharge their Android smartphones directly from its integrated battery. And whether consumers are on their morning commute or just out with friends, the Seagate Joy Drive enables them to access videos and other content anywhere, without the need for a WiFi connection or cellular service. Available first in China this March through an exclusive partnership with JingDong, one of China’s largest online retailers, the Seagate Joy Drive is available in 1000GB (1TB) capacity. Seagate’s also evaluating potential future markets and partners for this product.
Adobe Creative Cloud with your Seagate and LaCie drives
And adding a new level of value for creative professionals and enthusiasts looking to try out the latest graphic design and video editing software from Adobe Systems, an expanded partnership between Adobe and Seagate now provides limited-time, no-cost access to Adobe’s latest applications bundled with popular Seagate and LaCie drives. Two new offerings available immediately include two complimentary months of the “Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan” (worth $19.98) — which features the new cloud-based photo service, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC — across the full range of Seagate Backup Plus and LaCie Porsche Design devices, as well as packaging one complimentary month of the “Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan” (worth $74.99) — which features Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator CC and much more — with all LaCie Rugged, LaCie d2 and LaCie big devices.
Seagate Systems’ high-density enclosure with real-time storage operating system
With news today for data center architects, Seagate Systems also announced the launch of the 5U84 high-density enclosure built with a next-generation operating system that together delivers performance, capacity and reliability. The 5U84 enclosure and firmware technology will enable businesses to store massive quantities of data in a high-availability enclosure that provides high performance access to data. What’s more, Seagate Systems’ operating system not only powers the high density 5U84, but dramatically improves the system’s performance and reliability, increasing confidence in using high-density enclosures.
As with any technology, it is critically important to create layers of protection when it comes to data storage, particularly in markets such as video surveillance, where the integrity of the data is critical. Using next generation data protection technology, Seagate’s Advanced Distributed Autonomic Protection Technology (ADAPT) can eliminate up to 95% of performance degradation during a disk drive rebuild when compared to traditional RAID solutions, meaning the 5U84 is essentially “self-healing”. The technology disperses data across multiple drives, allocating more resources to rebuilds, thereby reducing the time needed, minimizing the risk of a data unavailability issue and giving the end user uninterrupted access.
With the sheer volume of data forecasted to be created over the coming years, businesses are looking for a way to solve their capacity needs without having to sacrifice on space. The 5U84 system delivers just that, in a space-conscious storage model.
Seagate’s new 5U84 high-density storage system can pack up to 1 PB of raw storage capacity into a single chassis, which is expertly designed to occupy only five data center rack units. Hosting 84 drive bays that are rigorously tested to function with 8, 10, and even 12 TB drives, the product density of the 5U84 allows for a large quantity of data to be stored in a smaller space. Due to the 5U84’s density, the cost of floor space is reduced, along with heating, cooling and maintenance.
“Increasingly, our customers are focused on maximizing up-time and minimizing the cost of service. Traditional data protection approaches in a high-density enclosure often result in un-manageable rebuild times in the event of a device failure,” says Ken Claffey, vice president, Seagate Systems. “With this new operating system release, we are enabling customers to use high density enclosures with high capacity drives more confidently as we have dramatically reduced the rebuild window required.”
“Businesses need storage with all the performance, security, and management features technology can offer, but they also need to be able to access their growing data sets with accuracy and speed to promote business continuity,” explains Claffey. “With this next-generation operating system, businesses are provided with multi-core functionality, allowing multiple cores to share the workload as specific processing tasks are distributed to individual cores, meaning every resource is used to its maximum potential. A surveillance company for example, would therefore have fast access to actionable intelligence and insight, allowing them to make informed, real-time decisions. Seagate is committed to creating innovations that meet the complicated needs of today’s businesses, as demonstrated by this technology release.”
