[January 24, 2013]

Central Desktop Supercharges SocialBridge Cloud Collaboration Platform for Creative Agencies and Marketers with Aspera High-Speed Transport

Central Desktop (www.centraldesktop.com), a leading cloud-based collaboration platform company, today announced that its SocialBridge® solution is now supercharged with Aspera's (News - Alert) fasp™ bulk-data transport technology. The new offering enables secure file transfers at maximum speed to meet the growing digital asset demands that marketing teams and advertising agencies of today's real-time world face in fulfilling client demands. In benchmark tests, Aspera's fasp™ protocol increases file transfer speeds by up to 1,000x versus FTP file transfers in typical network scenarios with the most noticeable improvements occurring when working intercontinentally.

"One of the biggest issues impeding creative teams and agencies is the high volume of digital assets and big data starting to clog up the networks, which is frustrating when they need to share large, rich-media assets globally in a timely and reliable manner," said Arnulf Hsu, CTO and co-founder of Central Desktop. "To address this, we've integrated Aspera into SocialBridge so teams can get campaigns up and running faster than the competition without the bottlenecks that come with other systems available today."

John Colón, marketing technology product manager at Upshot, a full-service integrated marketing agency, reported noticeable performance gains in beta-testing of the integrated solution with 200MB video files. "It's like having a dedicated line. Using Aspera to transfer our large files enables us to be even more responsive to client needs by cutting the time it takes to send assets back and forth. This will be a huge time-saver for us."

Current research supports this trend. According to Alan Pelz-Sharpe, research director of content management and collaboration at 451 Research, File sizes are growing ever bigger due to the increased proliferation of rich media files - hence fast and efficient large file transfer systems are becoming ever more critical."

With large files that often exceed 50MB - such as .PSD, .AI and audio/video files - using Aspera to expedite file transfers and remedy this bottleneck is a natural fit for marketing teams and creative agencies using SocialBridge. The Aspera browser plug-in features background transfers with auto-resume to increase reliability of uninterrupted uploads and downloads. Central Desktop's integration with Aspera also eases enterprise search difficulties - thought by many to be the greatest challenge when dealing with rich media assets - by encouraging users to upload all data to Central Desktop, making search across all of the documents in users' organizations yield greater results. The Aspera browser plug-in is now available; existing SocialBridge customers may contact their account managers for more information.

"The work that Central Desktop is doing to proliferate cloud collaboration is cutting-edge, and we're very excited about this integration to help move its clients' data at maximum speed," said John Wastcoat, vice president of business development for Aspera.

To further increase the overall speed of the collaboration platform, this update also features a tie-in with Akamai's (News - Alert) delivery network for all international and U.S.-based Central Desktop and SocialBridge customers. With this integration for secure customer content caching, all downloads including web pages and files within SocialBridge will get a boost of up to 25 percent. Uploads will see an increase of up to 15 percent. The Akamai integration is currently live and requires no download or installation on the part of users.

About Central Desktop

Central Desktop helps people work together in ways they never imagined possible. Our SocialBridge online collaboration platform connects people and information in the cloud, making it possible to share files, combine knowledge, inspire ideas, manage projects and more. Central Desktop serves more than half a million users worldwide. Key Central Desktop customers include CBS, MLB (News - Alert).com, Harvard University, the Humane Society of the United States, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Javelin Marketing Group, Upshot, Engauge, WD-40 and Workday. Founded in 2005, Central Desktop is a privately-held company with headquarters in Pasadena, California. For more information, visit http://www.centraldesktop.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 1,800 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 (News - Alert) @asperasoft for more information.

About Akamai

Akamai® is the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere. At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

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