Ensuring good data storage is an obvious requirement for today’s information-rich companies. But organizations often need more than that, including management tools and security.

Webcam and time-lapse technology provider EarthCam Inc. has partnered with Dell Technologies for high-volume storage, backup and archiving of its unstructured data.

“We’ve been using the system for five years already; we’ve already added capacity, [and] we can add capacity on the fly,” said Bill Sharp (pictured), senior vice president of product development and strategy at EarthCam. “We can just keep innovating, which is what we do, without hitting any technological limits with our partnership.”

Sharp spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. They discussed how Dell’s Isilon and PowerScale meet the needs of EarthCam, how the company took advantage of business opportunities to grow during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its plans for the future. (* Disclosure below.)

Devices send millions of images per month

EarthCam has tens of thousands of cameras and sensors worldwide, capturing images mainly from major construction projects. These devices send millions of images per month to the company, which uses them to produce high-resolution documentation for its customers in various sectors, including construction, tourism, security, engineering and architecture.

“There are billions of files in the Isilon system right now,” Sharp said.

After the images arrive on EarthCam’s network and are saved on Isilon, the company’s editors start working on the content. At this stage, the organization achieves a significant time and cost savings by using the Isilon platform, as it does not need to move the data to an editing environment — everything is done in Isilon clusters. Video processing time has been reduced by 20%, according to Sharp.

“Any time we have to update or change these movies as a project evolves, that all can happen right there on that live environment,” Sharp explained. “And the retention is there, [so] if we have to go back later on, all of our customers’ data is really kept within that one area. It’s consolidated, and it’s secure.”

The storage, backup and archiving of EarthCam’s unstructured data on Isilon has allowed for the elimination of unnecessary resources and wasted time. The company eliminated almost all of its downtime, according to Sharp.

“We really have good visibility on how the storage system is being used in both our production and also in our backup environments,” Sharp stated. “It’s really, really easy for us to make our business decisions as we innovate and change processes, having that continual visibility and really knowing where we stand.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE