I’ve used Stornext on several storage projects when I worked for Chyron. My customers were Turner Studios, HSN and NBC Olympics.
This was a number of years ago using Stornext 4. Stornext is what is known as a “clustering file system”. The storage is usually connected through a SAN and looks like block addressable storage. Each node has a common file system (stornext) but the nodes themselves can be heterogeneous E.G. Mac, PC, Linux, Solaris , etc others. Accessing these files is very fast which is their claim to fame. To prevent each node from stepping on the others there is a metadata controller which acts like a traffic cop. From what I remember Quantum can now sell vertical solutions that include storage and the metadata controller, as well as piecemeal solutions.
Competitors are:
Isilon – Now owned by EMC, these systems are known as scale-out NAS. NAS is known as Network attached Storage, a fancy term for file servers. File servers can be a bottleneck because a single the File server must serve out each file to all its clients. If you add enough clients File Servers can slow down. Isilon gets around this limitation utilizing multiple File Servers serving the same content.
HyperFS– Sold by ScaleLogic. ScaleLogic is run by a bunch of colleagues/Friends of mine. HyperFS is a work-alike of Stornext developed in China. Reputed to be cheaper and perhaps faster.
GlusterFS– If all you are concerned is Linux devices there is a free alternative called GlusterFS.
Quantum itself– They started out making Hard disk drives, then acquired various tape drive companies. IMHO tape drives are still a valid backup medium. Looking at their website , is completely oriented around storage. Broadcast and related is one of their big markets. I would investigate on how they are doing vs. Isilon/EMC.