Avid seems to cover the security issues with cloud sharing

[deanrichard]

One of the biggest problems with security is that while it keeps bad people from stealing data, it also causes inconvenience for those who need to work on it. This not a problem limited to Avid, it's true in general. But the decision to store important data in the cloud has significant ramifications for workflow. Has anyone besides me ever forgotten the password to a site?

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

That would worry me a lot, it is disappointing they don't provide details on the encryption they use (besides just saying it is AES.... which i a start does not tell you a lot). Although they claim to have their system audited, but it is not clear what that means... audit the server deployment in a typical customer? Audit the MySQL etc. server back-end architecture? code? or audit the actual data encryption or all of it?

One of the dangers of such a system is the pure complexity can expose a lot of attack surface.

It's also not clear at all what is really going to be offered here, e.g. if it is would be included with Pro Tools subscriptions, if clients will need to deploy Forinet products as well. And the real-time decryption involved with MeadSeal may be a significant load on the local system... any users out there using Pro Tools clients with this? Hopefully Forinet will be heavily involved in setting up any infrastructure that Avid is providing. But Avid can't even get reliable download for it's own software or propagate license upgrades in a timely manner, which gives me pretty low confidence that Avid can build a complex online service and get encryption and security baked into that. Oh well if nothing else announcements like this one is likely to get black and white hatters looking at Fortinet.

[Frank Kruse]

Hm. Their certificate (still SSL 3 btw) has expired more than 6 months ago. Hope their key servers offer a bit more security...

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/anal...ortiumtech.com

;-)

[Bob Olhsson]

You guys need to get out more and check out who Avid's broadcast clients are.

[Bob Olhsson]

Avid is a very large company. I agree their web site is a train wreck but that isn't the division of the company that has handled broadcast collaboration for a decade.

[ValkRider]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

Avid is a very large company. I agree their web site is a train wreck but that isn't the division of the company that has handled broadcast collaboration for a decade.

Bob, having read many posts by you I get the impression you have been up to your chin in this industry for a good while.
I am not busting your chops here.
You seem to have a lot of industry experience and exposure so I thought you may have a better handle on the questions I am asking then many others here.

I am just a bed room boy with PT so I have no real irons in the fire in regard to PT or Avid. It is just a hobby.
I found this Wikipedia link in regard to Avid Technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avid_Technology

Even if the document is a little old, where do you think Pro Tools falls in what would be the priority list for Avid Tech,
being it has a diverse group of products to support and manage?
Would you venture a guess?

Avid Tech is a big company and is in business to profit itself and its shareholders.
So where does Pro Tools land when the company has diverse products to focus on and manage?
Is Pro Tools in the top 3, 5, 10?
Would you stab a guess at the question?
Could Avid and its resources be stretched to thin?
If Pro Tools is not their main focus or profit center then how much attention will it really garner?
I am curious about this. It sure seems like they are really struggling with Pro Tools right now.
Well, thanks much, and I can understand if you feel you don't have enough info to venture a guess or to make any comments.

[Touchwood Studios]

I honestly don't know why Avid loves to talk about features in Pro Tools that are months away from coming out. They have been chatting up this collaboration thing now for a year.

[latweek]

[sarcasm]

I will be soo surprised if the new "features" and fixes come out shortly after the first year "plan" expires.

[/sarcasm]

We are now in May, and i'm thinking from a dev pipeline perspective, QA, etc. things would have to be pretty well solidified now. And as far as deadlines, Q4 releases are always greeted with a "yes, sure...."

Weren't the releases going to get faster and easier now in the new model? Hope we're shocked and awed this summer!

I kid, I kid!

Best wishes.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by ValkRider

...where do you think Pro Tools falls in what would be the priority list for Avid Tech,
being it has a diverse group of products to support and manage?
Would you venture a guess? ...

I think Pro Tools has the most customers however we probably rank below broadcast and live sound as a profit center.

Avid has been running everything on decade-old technology until very recently so there must have been massive investments made over the past few years and they are probably stretched to get all of the new stuff up, running and out the door. Moving everything to 64 bit and Media Composer to native while retaining project compatibility with older versions is obviously a huge hump they needed to get past. Something I found interesting in a recent blog post about Sibelius is that apparently the new 64 bit versions of Pro Tools, Media Composer and Sibelius share a lot of common code for the first time. I can't imagine that's not going to be the foundation for a lot of new Pro Tools features.

Reading about their new S6L live system, it's clear this was a massive undertaking involving a great deal more innovation than I would have expected. They'll probably get quite a few years out of that investment before needing to go back to the drawing board. It'll be interesting to see how much of it migrates into the next generation of Pro Tools hardware.

Avid acquired a number of collaboration pioneers, including Euphonix and Rocket Network over the years but never did very much with this technology outside of broadcast where they are a major player. I think Avid Everywhere is mostly a rebranding and expansion beyond broadcast. It paints a trendy picture of "innovation" for the Wall Street crowd who yawn at the mention of Media Composer or Pro Tools while probably requiring very few actual resources for Avid to implement. I don't see it as competing with Pro Tools for support.

I root for Avid because Pro Tools and Media Composer are a lot bigger percentage of Avid's overall business than Adobe, Apple or Yamaha's competing software. They are the cornerstones of everything else Avid does. For that reason, I think a great deal more is in the pipeline for Pro Tools. We just need to be patient.

[rockridge]

I root for Protools. Mainly because of it's ease of use.
But that was the work of Digidesign, not Avid.

Avid's going into the service business with the cloud and subscriptions.
That's where the money is.

[Bob Olhsson]

Digidesign has been part of Avid since Pro Tools III in 1994. Same company, same developers. In fact a number of Media Composer developers came from digidesign.