SVG Sit-Down: OpenDrives' Sean Lee, Michael Wilsker, and Jason Matousek on Evolving Data Management

SVG Sit-Down: OpenDrives' Sean Lee, Michael Wilsker, and Jason Matousek on Evolving Data Management Next-gen Astraeus, updated Atlas, unlimited-capacity pricing lead the changes By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 7:00 am

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It has been a year of transformation and momentum for OpenDrives. With an evolving media and entertainment landscape, the company has embraced change, retooled its leadership, and introduced technologies designed to meet the complex, hybrid demands of today's content creators. At NAB 2025, OpenDrives made waves with major updates to its flagship Atlas storage platform - earning top honors from NAB and TV Technology - and teased its Astraeus next-generation cloud-native platform, a scalable, flexible solution designed to unify siloed data environments and provide consistent access across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid workflows.

Sean Lee: We have made several significant moves to ensure OpenDrives' long-term success. [Among them are] delivering new and exciting features for our flagship Atlas product and going to market with Astraeus.

SVG sat down with OpenDrives CEO Sean Lee; Senior Director, Integrated Strategy, Michael Wilsker; and Director, Market Programs, Jason Matousek to explore the company's ambitious product roadmap, its vision for Astraeus and Atlas, and how software licensing and unlimited-capacity pricing are helping customers rebuild and grow.

It has been a few months since NAB 2025, but what were some big highlights for you at the show?

Wilsker: NAB was an incredibly busy and successful show for us. Technologically, we had two highlights: a new version of our flagship Atlas data-storage and -management platform, and we provided visitors with a sneak peek at Astraeus, our next-generation cloud-native data-services platform that is the culmination of our Free Your Data initiative. We were also thrilled that Atlas was recognized at the show with two prestigious awards: a Product of the Year from NAB and a Best of Show from TV Technology. And we had also just received news that Atlas was placed on the CRN Storage 100 list for the third consecutive year. We had lots to celebrate.

Michael Wilsker: A lot of customers are rebuilding their revenue streams. We wanted to offer customers greater cost-predictability and better feature options as they become more competitive again.

Can you provide a bit more detail on Astraeus? Why do you believe a cloud-native data-services platform like this is valuable in today's market? How does it reflect the evolution of the market and customer demands?

Wilsker: To tell the story of why Astraeus is meeting market demand, we need to travel back five years to the early days of the pandemic, when people were scrambling to adapt to new ways of working. A lot of reactionary decisions were made in order to keep content flowing, including a significant shift toward cloud-based solutions. But the tools simply weren't there yet, which led to fragmented systems with some content in the cloud and some still on prem. This splintering of data sets and workflows crystallized over the last five years, and now people need to deal with these decisions that altered workflow processes. They're not looking at how to take the next step forward quite yet because equipment purchased back then isn't reaching the end of its life but budgets from just a few years ago are now being exceeded.

Most organizations have discovered that they're creating and managing more data today than they'd expected, and, as a result, they're looking for tools that can break down data silos and help overcome the archipelago of data that they have in the office, on remote workstations, or in multiple cloud platforms - or even in their tools that have built-in storage. The challenge is creating a single plane to store all that data and make it accessible to all the tools and users.

Jason Matousek: Content creators are becoming less and less concerned about where their data is and concerned only about accessing it and using it the way they need to.

That's where Astraeus comes in. That is what Astraeus is intended to resolve.

People went to the cloud because it offered something revolutionary in the world of computing and storage: flexibility. You can spin up compute or storage capacity and scale it flexibly, something that historically has not been very common or easy to do on prem.

Astraeus is designed using cloud-native principles: it allows you to take the hardware that you already have or the hardware that you're using for your private-cloud environment and very modularly and flexibly deploy that hardware to grow that environment. Whether it's compute resources for your application platform, a storage resource for your data, or even bringing in external storage, it provides all the flexibility of the cloud - without the cloud.

Astraeus was previewed at NAB 2025 and - I don't say this lightly - was received with nothing less than elation. Customers were so relieved to learn about this solution from people that work in the industry and understand their challenges, not just from the workflow perspective but from the tools and personnel perspective. They were thrilled that OpenDrives will be providing a solution that is scalable, cost-manageable, and secure. Everyone wanted to learn more about it and asked how it could be applied in their environments. There's a lot of excitement about the pending release date.

Matousek: I can concur with that. Elation is a good word, but they seemed even grateful for an answer to their challenges. A lot of folks in the markets we serve don't have the technical resources or know-how to repatriate data on their own. They're looking for a solution that makes the process as

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