Random House Selects Aspera to Power Worldwide Production of Audiobooks

Aspera platform to support global, high-speed digital workflows with integrated transport, collaboration, automation, mobile and reporting technologies

London, 10 April 2012 — Aspera, Inc., creators of next-generation software technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, today announced that Random House, the world's largest English language trade publisher, has selected Aspera for high-speed data transport and workflow automation and management. By replacing their existing transport technology and in-house workflow orchestration tools with Aspera software, Random House will shorten production cycles as they scale operations and expand distribution channels.

Random House is the leading audio publisher in the industry today, with an audiobooks library of over 2500 titles from bestselling authors available on CD and audio download. Content creation is a worldwide, collaborative operation, with voice talent, audio editing, graphic design and distribution activities dispersed across cities and across continents. Their sophisticated workflows require increasingly flexible and scalable high-speed file transport and workflow automation systems to meet their recent and future business growth.

After rigorous evaluation of available solutions, Random House chose a full suite of Aspera distribution, collaboration, and automation software products.

The deployment at Random House is centered on faspex™, a global collaboration platform based on Aspera’s patented fasp™ transport technology. The software solution enables disparate groups to collaborate quickly and efficiently by exchanging files and directories of any format and size at maximum speed, regardless of transfer distance and network conditions.

“At Random House, we currently publish over 300 titles per year with content creation activities throughout the globe,” said Joshua Crone, vice president, infrastructure, technical services at Random House. “We need efficient, reliable automation tools that can meet the demands of our workflows today and will allow us to scale and adapt to new requirements in the future. With Aspera, we get a full suite of solutions that accelerates almost every aspect of our highly customised workflows, giving us a key strategic advantage over other audio publishers.”

Rounding up the automation, universal access and reporting requirements of the system, the following Aspera components are also included in this comprehensive software deployment:

• Aspera Orchestrator for automating complex workflow sequences with a logical execution engine, a library of plug-ins for asset transformation, quality control and other functions, and an SDK for future integrations.
• Aspera Console for reporting, including the ability to filter reports based on metadata for fine-grained content and resource tracking.
• Aspera Mobile and the Aspera Add-in for Microsoft Outlook, which extend Aspera’s global person-to-person file delivery to mobile devices and Outlook users.
• Aspera Cargo, which automatically downloads and consolidates content on a single client, keeping team members in sync with the latest files.

“With hundreds of content creators dispersed worldwide, not only do publishers like Random House need high-speed data transport, they need integrated tools to help them manage complex, proprietary workflows,” said Michelle Munson, CEO and founder at Aspera. “We are excited to work with Random House as they deploy Aspera solutions for a broad range of automation, collaboration and distribution activities within the large-scale, global workflows that help make Random House a leading publisher of bestselling audiobooks.”

Helen Smith, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, 44 (0) 20 7403 8878  helens@rlyl.com

About Aspera

Aspera is the creator of next-generation transport technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions. Based on its patented fasp™ protocol, Aspera software fully utilizes existing infrastructures to deliver the fastest, most predictable file-transfer experience. Aspera’s core technology delivers unprecedented control over bandwidth, complete security and uncompromising reliability. More than 1,500 organizations across a variety of industries on six continents rely on Aspera software for the business-critical transport of their digital assets. Please visit www.asperasoft.com and follow us on Twitter @asperasoft for more information.

Media contact: Helen Smith, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, t:020 7403 8878, helens@rlyl.com

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