Transcript

My name is Luis Rivera from Nocturnal Technologies, and basically, what we do is IT consulting and network consulting. We go into businesses, set up networks, application servers, and we support all the way from back end to desktop support.

Searching for New Data Acceleration Software

The client that I'm using this with, they have an outsourcing company and this outsourcing company would do image retouching for them. And the way that it was set was that the outsourcing company, which is located - I think it's in India - they would have my client upload files every night via another piece of software, and then in the morning my client would have to come in and download all the files. You could have an item, let's say for example, a chair, that would have three, four or five photographs. When they're raw photographs, they're about 100MB each. They get shrunken down, of course, because of the different editing. But that's why they need the data acceleration because they don't have enough people on-site to manipulate these photographs and edit them. They have an outside company that does the retouching for them.

Why ExpeDat^™ from Data Expedition?

Originally, the outsourcing company had Aspera. I wanted to reverse that equation and have my client host the data. That way, the outsourcer could connect to our server and pull the data to them, and then when they were done they would push the data back to us which would eliminate the time that it would take or the responsibility for somebody on my client's side to remember every night to go, "Oh, I have to upload these files and then in the morning I have to download them."

I tested a bunch of solutions and of course one of them was Aspera and I tested probably about six or seven other solutions until I ended up with ExpeDat. And I just chose it because it's so easy to deploy.

I inquired about the product and I was looking, and said, "Okay, this looks like it will work." I spoke to one of the sales people and he told me, "Oh, we have a demo here," and he sent it to me via email and I'm looking at it and I download it and I'm just kind of scratching my head. And I called him back and I said, "Hey, where's the rest of it?" And he said, "What do you mean where's the rest of it?" I said, "Well, this file's like 2MB. This can't be the whole product." I was expecting in my mind this was going to be a several hundred MB or even GB product. He said, "No. It's all there." So, I unzipped the package and I went ahead and configured it and literally, I had a test up and running within two minutes, which was, mind-boggling.

Setting up the ExpeDat Server and Client

The way that ExpeDat is set up as a Windows service. Every time that the server reboots the ExpeDat server will start. Then, there is a front end. Basically, it's a web page sitting on an Internet Information Server, IIS. And that interface is basically like a file transfer interface and then the outsourcer can pull that up in any browser and they can select which folder they want to either drop files into or they want to pull files from. Once that happens, when they click to do whatever that function they want to do, what happens is that the ExpeDat client, which is a little piece of software that sits on your computer, that ExpeDat client opens up and that's what takes care of transferring the data.

Easy for End Users

We've probably been running it for about three years. It integrates very well. It just works. They love it because now that saves them time and there is nobody that needs to be responsible for transferring data every night and then pulling it back every morning.

The Benefits of Using ExpeDat

I have to summarize it down to one main benefit, it would be time. You're saving time.

As far as on the IT side of things, I don't have to touch it. It just works. It's not a finicky application that just breaks or something fragile. No, it just works. You set it up and it works and that's it. It's phenomenal.

And their support is phenomenal. Typically, I speak to Dr. Noble who is the creator of the product and he just knows his stuff really well.

If you were to ask me, "Hey, Luis, would you recommend this for my company or my client?" I would say, "Absolutely, and without question." It's probably one of the best pieces of software that I've actually had to implement when it comes to managed file transfer or high-speed file transfer. Like I said, I've tested before probably six or seven different solutions and some have been really extremely complicated to set up for almost no reason. We're in IT to make things simple. We use software to solve problems, and essentially, what that does is that it saves us time. And ExpeDat, it works and it saves us time. So, it's really a win-win in my book.

Their support, their knowledge, their product working, it's really like I said, one of the best pieces of software that I've had to implement for a client. Absolutely.