Services & Support
Digital Asset Management Hosting

Hosting | Media Streaming | Professional Services | Asset Services | Support

What is Digital Asset Management Hosting?
Digital Asset Management hosting refers to the provision of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) software system as an online service. Daydream have extensive experience of setting up hosting solutions for DAM applications such as our own FocusOPEN Digital Asset Manager.

Our key area of expertise is large scale Media Asset Management hosting where a solution will be used my thousands of concurrent users from numerous global locations. Whether clients wish to fully outsource or insource hosting, Daydream can provide a flexible tailored package that meets specific requirements. Unlike some solution vendors, we do not require you to host exclusively with ourselves unless this is your preference.

DAM Hosting: The Key Factors

There are a number of requirements for a robust, secure and scalable digital asset hosting solution that will provide capacity for high demand DAM application and media asset hosting. These include:


Scalable Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Enterprise Digital Asset Management solutions rely on having a content delivery infrastructure that can handle bandwidth heavy media such as streamed video, archived audio, large print artwork files and original images.

Daydream's content delivery solutions can scale from relatively basic distribution of images and documents right the way to large scale content delivery using an enterprise class CDN (Content Delivery Network). See our media streaming services for more details on the range of audio and video content we can distribute and the formats offered.


Media Encoding Capability

Media encoding is the process of converting ingested source media into a proxy or surrogate format suitable for delivery via a Digital or Media Asset Management system (e.g. thumbnails or Flash previews). Any serious enterprise DAM system needs a media encoding server that can be scaled and hosted independently of the core Digital Asset Management application.

Our FocusOPEN application includes a built-in video transcoding facility and can also be integrated into those offered by third party solution vendors. In either case, we can provide clients with either combined media encoding virtual servers for delivery from a single physical host, or a dedicated media processing server.

As well as video transcoding, our media encoding servers are capable of converting over 100 original image formats to a chosen target format (in addition to image processing services), office documents, audio files and print media files.


Secure Data Centres

A secure and resilient data centre is the basis of a reliable hosting provision. Without one, the server that will host the Digital Asset Management solution is at substantial and on-going risk of failure. All data centres Daydream use feature:
  • CCTV with security guard patrol
  • Manned 24 hours
  • Humidity Control
  • VESDA (Very Early Smoke Detection)
  • 6 days power backup via on-site generators

We currently use a range of facilities in the UK and North America, including: RedBus Telecity, Level3, Blue Square and Front Street (Toronto) and partner with providers in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Singapore and Australia.


Resilient Network Infrastructure

DAM systems need to process bandwidth-intensive media like video. Whether archived or streamed, the hosting of video assets requires a robust, high-availability network infrastructure managed by skilled and experienced engineers. Daydream's network can accommodate high levels of traffic and has these features:
  • A fully switched Tier 1 IP network with multiple redundant routers and connections to multiple ISPs.
  • A 10gbit network architecture with interconnections between each data centre.
  • 1gbit, fully-switched port on an edge switch for each server.
  • Separate aggregation with failover redundancy.

Robust Server Hardware

Having reliable server hardware is vital to avoid unplanned outages as a result of equipment failure. Equally important, however, is that flexibility is designed into physical host provisions so that servers c an be scaled to meet changing levels of demand.
  • We use only brand new HP or Dell equipment (either ProLiant or PowerEdge, physical hosts).
  • All physical hosts are fitted with redundant power supplies - we have battery backup to allow the servers to continue to operate for one hour if the mains supply fails.
  • We use redundant disk array (RAID) on all physical hosts deployed.
  • We retain inventories of spare components and complete servers to allow components to be exchanged quickly.
  • A server health check is carried out at regular intervals to test for potential defects. If found, faulty components are replaced before they fail.

Detailed Security Policy

Daydream are aware that digital assets can be some of the most critical tools in an organisation and the consequences of them falling into the wrong hands can have devastating effects on the whole enterprise. For this reason, security is paramount in every Digital Asset Management solution we supply. As part of out hosting provision, we consider the following security factors:

Network Security

Each hosting installation also includes a dedicated Cisco PIX hardware firewall. We use intrusion detection systems to identify attempts to gain access via SQL injection or other application based attacks. FocusOPEN is designed to work without modification through corporate firewalls.

Communications Security

Application communications are secured using 128-bit SSL encryption. Passwords, web pages, application scripts and assets are all secured during transit.

Identification Security

All users must enter a unique username and password combination to be authenticated by the application. This combination generates a security key that is stored on the user's machine during the current session and determines the user's role, permissions and access levels. As well as our own system, we can integrate with enterprise authentication management systems such as LDAP or Active Directory so users can login with their corporate workstation credentials.

Role Based Security

User roles decide what functions they may access. These can be both group based (e.g. upload user, business unit administrator, super administrator etc) or granular using a checkbox style system to customise access levels for different individuals.

Asset Level Security Policies

By defining security policies for individual or groups of assets, clients deploying implementations of FocusOPEN can create a very granular set of permissions to allow or deny operations on that assets by unauthorised individuals.

Data Protection Compliance

Daydream are registered with the UK Information Commissioner and a member of staff is the designated data controller. All our hosting installations are fully compliant with the UK Data Protection Act.


Multiple Backup Capabilities

A comprehensive backup policy is critical to ensure that assets are protected against major hardware failure. Daydream’s Digital Asset Management hosting provision includes both a backup to tape and a live remote backup to a secondary data centre. Unused tapes are stored in a fire proof safe.


Advanced Monitoring

All aspects of a client’s hosting facility are continuously monitored. This includes:
  • Connectivity
  • VPN
  • Web Server
  • Database Server Failure
  • Application Server
  • Media Server
  • Disk Space
  • RAID disks
  • Processor Utilisation
  • Suspicious security related activity
    (e.g. Denial of Service attacks, SQL injection etc.)

If any of the above either fail or reaches a pre-determined threshold, visual and aural warnings are issued in our office immediately, all full-time staff receive an e-mail warning, an SMS message is sent to engineers and senior developers.


Failover & Redundancy

To meet High Availability (HA) or Continuity of Business (CoB) requirements, we offer a range options. These include:
  • 100% availability
  • Full hardware redundancy or virtualised secondary hosts
  • A remote failover using a secondary host held at a distance of at least 30 miles from the primary facility is provided
  • Live synchronisation and/or clustering of web, media processing and database servers
  • Redundant DNS servers in multiple geographical locations

Service Level Agreement Commitment (SLA)

  • The hosting SLA is integrated into the application support
  • We operate a 24x7 helpdesk
  • 24x7 network support
  • We have an agreement with the data centre providers to provide emergency maintenance to our hosts
  • We keep inventories of spare equipment both on-site at the data centre and at our offices in the event of component failure
  • We have the highest level support and warranty schemes from HP and Dell and can request an engineer to attend with 4 hours of a hardware fault being reported
  • We offer a 100% SLA
  • Service credits offered for failure to meet response and/or resolution times

See our support page for more details on our SLA and response times.

Further Information
For further information on Daydream's Digital Asset Management hosting provision, contact our Technical Support Team and read our report, "Digital Video Asset Hosting With FocusOPEN".

Digital Asset Management Solutions: Find Out More

 

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Digital Asset Management Software, Services and Solutions
Daydream Interactive Ltd t/a Daydream - UK Company Number: 3453913
Registered Office: Linton House - 164-180 Union Street - LONDON - SE1 0LH - United Kingdom
TEL: +44(0)20 7096 1471 - FAX: +44(0)20 7117 1636 - EMAIL: info@daydream.co.uk