Computer Entertainment, Inc. is recognized as the global leader in computer based entertainment. SCEI, with its subsidiary divisions of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and Sony Computer Entertainment Korea, develops, publishes and markets software for the Playstation platform family, and manages the third-party licensing programs for these platforms in their respective markets worldwide. Platforms include the Playstation, Playstation2, the PSP handheld computer entertainment system, and the recently released Playstation3.

With nine global studios and over one thousand licensed development partners, SCEI's software development process is critically dependent upon efficient, secure collaboration including the transfer of game source and build image files between geographically distributed development teams. Yet the very poor performance of conventional file transfer software such as secure FTP meant that typical transfers of large source files and build images were painfully slow and impractical for otherwise 24/7 worldwide development cycles, and any particular transfer could not fully utilize the rich WAN bandwidth connecting the studios. Furthermore, the problem was expected to grow as the game content for the Playstation3 platform would expand to fill whole Blueray disks, which have six times the storage as today's DVD's, and as ever more development partners would be added worldwide.

“I must say that our experiences here in Europe with your software package have been remarkable. Frankly, it is hard to imagine going back to the 'way it used to be'. Very much impressed indeed.”

Shawn Layden, V.P. of SONY Computer Entertainment Europe

Sony had begun seeking solutions to the problem in 2005, and by early 2006, several SCE entities independently discovered Aspera software. Under the coordination of Aspera's reselling partner Netmarks Japan, SCE conducted two months of field evaluation of Aspera software for transferring of game files between its studios in Europe, Japan and the US. The trial coincided with the lead up to the E3 conference, which provided an ideal opportunity to validate the transfer performance and the value of the high-speed capability in a rapid collaborative development process involving studios worldwide. The initial tests were very successful. Shawn Layden, Vice President, International of SCE Europe, commented to Aspera, "I must say that our experiences here in Europe with your software package have been remarkable. Frankly, it is hard to imagine going back to the 'way it used to be'. Very much impressed indeed." For example, SCE-Europe reported achieving consistent 18.7 Mbps transfers with a target rate of 20 Mbps for transfers from Europe to Japan, and reduced the transfer time of a 1-gigabyte file from over three hours with FTP to only 7 minutes. SCEI evaluated transfers from Japan to Europe for file sizes ranging from 2 GB to 50 GB files and achieved nearly ideal throughputs.

As a result, SCE began the first phase of a global deployment of Aspera software in May 2006 for high-speed file transfer between its worldwide studios and partners for game development, new game planning and the QA and evaluation process. SCE has deployed Aspera Enterprise Server software in Japan at the NTT-Communications hosting site in the Tokyo region and 100 Scp clients to its developers throughout studios in Japan, Europe and the US with plans to expand eventually to 1500 clients world-wide. An additional 25 Scp for Point-to-Point licenses have been purchased by Sony Computer Entertainment America for transfers at various studio and partner facilities in the US and Europe. In summer 2006 leading up to the Playstation3 launch, SCE's development partners in the United States and Europe began deploying Aspera software themselves to dramatically speed up transfers to Sony.

In the second phase, SCE America is building a master file upload and mirroring system to standardize the transfer of source code and build images throughout the SCE network of studios and partners. The system integrates Aspera software for high-speed, distance-neutral transfer performance. Each major development studio is assigned a "home server" running the Aspera Enterprise Server software or Aspera Scp for Point-to-Point. The servers host SCE's custom web application embedding the Aspera browser-plug-in. When developers initiate an upload or download in the browser UI, the Aspera browser plug-in will take over to upload the files to the Enterprise Server software. The Aspera fasp protocol provides high-speed, secure transfer, regardless of distance or network conditions. Each transfer request is authorized with the system using Aspera's external authorization capability, enabling fine-grained content access control and bandwidth control policies per user.

The uploaded files will be automatically replicated worldwide to the other major studios at maximum speed using the Aspera Scp core such that all studios have a complete mirror of the current development tree in near real time. For example, each gigabyte can be delivered from Japan to the US over a 45 Mbps link in 3.5 minutes, and an entire DVD image in about 15 minutes. Each home server running Aspera software will provide developers working at distant facilities with the same high speed transfer performance as local developers. Servers need not be located close to users for good performance, allowing for significant consolidation and simplification of the architecture.

One of the key requirements for this global deployment will be per-user and server-wide bandwidth management. Any individual Aspera flow can transfer steadily at the full capacity of the 45 Mbps link connecting each of the SCE global offices to the wide area. When multiple fasp transfers are running concurrently, fair bandwidth sharing with other fasp transfers and with standard network traffic is essential. For bandwidth control, the fasp links in the web UI will lock on the fasp adaptive rate control, causing the Aspera transfers to dynamically adapt to use the available bandwidth (and only the available bandwidth), sharing bandwidth fairly with one another and with other network traffic. The links will also set bandwidth caps as a percentage of the automatically measured link capacity, using Aspera's high precision bandwidth discovery, so caps are appropriate to each individual user's connection speed. Through the server side web services API or through the Aspera management utilities, SCEI will be able to monitor the effective throughput of all transfers on a server and to throttle or increase individual transfer speeds in real-time to meet delivery deadlines. All transfer details are logged to a database for history and audit reporting. The new system with Aspera software is targeted to launch in early 2007.