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Snell & Wilcox Discontinues Disk Hardware, Continues Software Development

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Snell & Wilcox today announced that it will cease further expansion of the disk-based hardware platform originally developed at its Newbury Research Centre. It will therefore no longer sell the 'Spirint' workstation, 'Splicer' conformer and 'Piccaso' colour correction products that were originally acquired as part of the purchase of Newbury-based HD workstation manufacturer Post Impressions in September 2001.

This decision only affects this generation of hardware development. Snell & Wilcox says it is committed to building on the system know-how acquired in the platform development program, on its understanding of the AAF format and on the capabilities of its 'Synapse' software. Synapse is a workgroup metadata server based on the AAF (Advanced Authoring Format) object model.

Announcing the decision, Snell & Wilcox CEO Simon Derry said, "Over the past few weeks we have reviewed the disk-based business area in order to assess our current approach and decide where we should focus our efforts. This review has clearly shown that post production is an essential market for us, but that our current disk-based hardware solutions cannot easily evolve to meet our customer's needs.

"However, from its inception Synapse has been designed as an open, hardware-agnostic platform that can easily be adapted to run on other disk platforms. We will pursue development of Synapse as a software platform allowing us to deliver more advanced solutions. The experience we have gained in this first phase of product development will be invaluable in helping us to make the right choices as we move forward."

Snell & Wilcox will continue to provide service and support to current customers of disk-based products.

International Press Contact: David Cunningham, Press Relations Manager, Snell & Wilcox, Southleigh Park, Southleigh Park House, Havant, Hampshire, UK PO9 2PE, UK. Tel: +44 23 9248 9144 or Email: david.cunningham@snellwilcox.com.