Today, third-party Apple hardware maker OWC announced the acquisition of LumaForge, best known for its Jellyfish lineup of shared storage solutions primarily aimed at video content houses. Notably, LumaForge will continue as a company, with team intact, as it seeks to further expand its hardware and software solutions.
Although the name Jellyfish may not be as familiar to the mainstream, LumaForge’s video editing servers are well-known among professional video clients, including Disney, Sony, Adobe, and even NASA. The shared storage solutions are also growing in popularity among larger YouTube channels, such as MKBHD and TLD.
Currently LumaForge offers mobile, tower, and rack-based Jellyfish servers, which feature up to 240TB of RAW on board storage (expandable up to 1.2 PB of RAW storage), and support up to 22 simultaneous workstations via 10GbE/1Gb direct connections. Specs can venture even higher on custom-built configurations, but all setups are well positioned for 4K video workflows and beyond.
As you can tell, this isn’t the sort of hardware that most individual video content creators would need. Jellyfish servers are, however, perfect for teams of video editors that are working on the same project or multiple projects simultaneously..
Complementing the hardware is the Jellyfish Connect and Jellyfish Manager software. These packages allow users to connect and admins to set up, maintain, and enable advanced custom workflows via a handy UI. Then there’s Kyno, a software solution for managing pre-production tasks, like organizing and assigning metadata. Users can also remotely access Jellyfish servers at full gigabit speeds.
WIth the acquisition of LumaForge, OWC immediately gains an expanded footprint that reaches far beyond the consumer grade products that it’s primarily known for among Mac users.
With OWC’s already impressive existing hardware catalog, along with last year’s acquisition of BRU, and the 2019 acquisition of fan-favorite Akitio, OWC continues to position itself as a major player and go-to storage and backup solution across consumer and professional landscapes.
I am excited to welcome the amazing LumaForge team and solutions into the OWC Family. This acquisition both strengthens our enterprise/server storage capabilities and enables an even broader lineup of solutions to serve the needs of video, photography, and music professionals with some really exceptional new offerings. Jellyfish and LumaForge customers will continue receiving the support and development, while this trusted technology will flourish and have a whole new level of support and engagement within the OWC family.
Larry O’Connor, OWC founder & CEO
I’ve personally been a big fan of what LumaForge has been doing over the last few years, and even though I’ve never personally owned a Jellyfish box, I’ve used them several times at trade shows like NAB. I’ve always been impressed by how the smart folks at LumaForge saw a problem and created an end-to-end server solution in a box that you can literally carry with you on set and then back to the studio. I think a big part of this acquisition is that OWC is keeping the team that created these solutions in tact and that the LumaForge brand will live on under OWC’s umbrella.
What are your thoughts on OWC’s latest acquisition? Sound off in the comments below.
