Masstech Group Announces Avalon Conversion

Masstech Group has released new software to seamlessly convert any Avalon site to its MassStore Media Asset Management (MAM) solution. This approach minimizes the time required for the migration process to less than one day, compared to others that could take months, depending on the size of the legacy content library. It has now been installed in several sites resulting in a rapid and smooth transition with minimal impact on existing operations.

“When EMC announced the end of support for the Avalon product line, we felt the need to reach out to the Avalon customer base and offer our solution,” says Joe French, CEO and president of Masstech Group. “Avalon users clearly had not planned for the unexpected expense and significant operational ramifications you typically encounter when migrating an existing digital library. We can help those customers accomplish this quickly and minimize the disruption to their operations.”

As far back as 2004, Masstech was asked by KCTS, the Seattle PBS member station, to convert their facility from Avalon to the MassStore solution. KCTS’ motivation to change was their desire to take advantage of MassStore’s Web browser GUI and intelligent nearline disk cache integration that optimized the data transfers to and from data tape. But they also wanted to avoid the usual painful migration process of having to restore all of the Avalon content and re-archive it by the new application. This approach is extremely time-consuming and very disruptive. As a result, Masstech developed an approach to import the Avalon Database content and directly read the Avalon archived data tapes. Once the database is imported into MassStore, the Avalon solution can simply be decommissioned.

When stations convert from Avalon to MassStore they benefit from the MassStore framework that presents multiple advantages, including more than 170 broadcast interfaces, infinitely scalable bandwidth, and no licensing fees.

“In its day Avalon was a pioneering technology,” French says. “Today, however, the customers who change to MassStore will experience an incredible leap in overall functionality. Bridging production with our AVID and FCP interfaces and invoking workflows that function across all boundaries of the broadcast facility is a standard part of our overall solution. MassStore allows you to quickly and painlessly move from Avalon to a whole new generation of technology.”