About Channel 4

Enabling multi-platform content delivery for Channel 4's on-demand platform.

Channel 4 was the first UK broadcaster to launch an on-demand platform in 2006, 4oDTV, which quickly proved to be the most popular commercial TV service on the Internet. Since then, 4oD has continued to grow considerably each year, with 28 million monthly video views and 7.6 million unique users per month able to choose when, where and what content they watch.

Solution 

Exponential-e was selected for its Network which offers low latency, low-jitter and no packet loss. The Network was already proven in broadcasting environments with Exponential-e serving other major broadcasters.

As Exponential-e was already supplying a 1Gig fibre circuit to Channel 4, connecting various offices in London, it was a trusted partner. Andrew Bell, Technical Project Manager, Broadcast and Engineering, explained the reasons for selecting Exponential-e:

"We chose Exponential-e, as they have been a partner since May 2006 and their service has been excellent. The technology delivers and their teams ensure we enjoy a good working relationship with more than satisfactory service levels. They already had a quality broadcast network in place, so it seemed a natural choice for the latest deployment"

Exponential-e worked closely with Channel 4 to upgrade the existing Network to a 1Gbps capacity, which is capable of supporting bandwidth hungry content such as encoded video files, metadata, ancillary assets, subtitling data and images on a daily basis. The Network is highly resilient and scalable, backed by 99.99% Service Level Agreements to ensure next to no packet loss occurs; it enables real-time data delivery that is crucial in broadcast environments.

This allows for fast and efficient delivery of media rich content to a newly outsourced production facility at RedBee Media, where the preparation of non-linear content takes place, playout and transmission. Content is then distributed via Exponential-e's multiple point-to-point e-pipes to various partners and content providers, including IOKO, Home Choice, Virgin Media, BT Vision, Inqb8r and On Demand.

The upgrade enabled Channel 4 to eliminate the time-intensive use of tapes and hard drives, where content needed to be transferred to hard drives then shipped to various UK locations by couriers and post. It also no longer needs to host large FTP sites for content distribution.

Rather than relying on an antiquated manual process, we now have a Network in place that supports an automated workflow, dramatically speeding up our processes. We can now deliver a large number of content directly onto the platforms much faster, significantly freeing up internal resources and making operational cost savings" explains Andrew Bell.

Channel 4 is also looking to deploy a fail-safe backup Network in the event of a disaster situation, leveraging Exponential-e's 1GigE Connection and circuit resilience to ensure no disruptions or downtime occurs.

1. Channel 4 now has a resilient quality Network in place that can push content to multiple platforms quickly and efficiently, providing operational cost-savings and resource efficiencies. This also enables Channel 4 to meet time-to-market deadlines for service launches and deploy services in a quicker fashion.
2. Since the launch, 4oD has forged new paths into content delivery and is now available on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Seesaw, iPads, iPhones, PlayStations and on TV video on demand services.

 Challenges

Since its launch, 4oD has continued to grow considerably each year, placing an ever increasing demand on its existing distribution Network. This demand reached a peak when Channel 4 prepared to re-launch its 4oD service to provide viewers with access to all its archives. To prepare for the launch, Channel 4 needed to source a quality broadcast Network provider, capable of distributing all of its non-linear programming on a daily basis. The Network also needed to support a newly automated workflow, where a large number of content would be directly pushed onto various platforms. As a result, Channel 4 began to evaluate possible suppliers.

Solution benefits

• High-speed 1Gbps Network.
• 99.99% Service Level Agreements.
• Fail-over backup Network.
• Broadcast quality, low jitter and no packet loss Network.
  

About the Guinness World Records

For over 62 years, Guinness World Records (GWR) has produced The Guinness Book of World Records, a book that documents record-breaking achievements and that itself holds a record: having sold 141 million copies, it's the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. In spite of these gargantuan sales figures and a globe-spanning reputation, the book has been and continues to be pulled together by a relatively small (but geographically dispersed) in-house team.

As a company, however, GWR has been expanding. Today, GWR is no longer only a book publisher - it is a multimedia brand agency with key presence across Digital, Events and Business Solutions. Working with leading brands and businesses, GWR delivers bespoke marketing campaigns, using record-breaking events to create inspirational, highly shareable content.

Solution 

To kick off its Cloud migration, GWR enlisted Exponential-e to migrate 200 of its employees from the existing onpremises Exchange to Office 365. Rob Howe knew that Microsoft's cloud-based business productivity suite would help overcome the challenges to collaboration posed by the company's geographic spread, enabling its workforce to collaborate to deliver engaging experiences and capitalise on market opportunities across the globe.

He also knew that Exponential-e would be the perfect partner to see GWR through this crucial first phase towards digitisation. Exponential-e had been providing critical communications services to GWR - from private connectivity between UK data centres and GWR's Beijing office to 10Gbps connectivity and hosted telephony - for close to five years. The mutual trust and understanding that this work had built between GWR and Exponential-e laid the groundwork for a remarkably speedy and successful Office 365 transition.

As Howe comments: "Our previous experience with Exponential-e gave me peace of mind. I know that they do what they say they will." Laying the foundations for a "painless" project Planning for the project began in July 2017. By September, work had started, with the core migration completed, as planned, in November. In order to complete a complex migration in less than three months, Exponential-e's team had to ensure the process would go off without a hitch.

And, in fact, it did: looking back on the process, Rob Howe describes the migration as "painless". In his view, this painlessness of execution was due largely to Exponential-e's meticulous planning.

"They are really good at going through things in detail and making sure they understand the business and key dates, rather than just the technology," says Howe.

Office 365 is also playing a crucial part in enabling GWR' IT department to transform its business function. It is proving extremely effective in helping the department to execute its strategic goal of supporting flexibility and mobility. Again, OneDrive provides a striking example to illustrate this, eliminating the need to move user files between machines, and greatly reducing the time it takes for the IT department to roll out PCs and devices to staff. Howe: "We've gone from rolling out one machine in a day and a half to rolling out two a day, which is a big improvement."

A key milestone on the path to the future It's improvements like this that are freeing GWR's IT department up to play a more proactive role in the wider business. And this, as Howe explains, is in turn helping GWR as a whole to move forward with its technology agenda and expand as a business:

"The Office 365 project has allowed our department to take a big step forward in becoming more flexible and responsive - and less reactive - to the business. It's allowing us to get out in front, which is key, especially as we continue to expand and diversify as a business and add new services."

The "painless" success of this project, GWR's first major foray into cloud, has been crucial in giving Rob Howe and his colleagues the confidence to continue heading in the direction of digitisation. "Going forward, every year there will be something new we're looking to expand into," he says, "so this was a key first step, and if it hadn't gone smoothly it would have made everything else far more challenging."

The Office 365 project has allowed our department to take a big step forward in becoming more flexible and responsive – and less reactive - to the business. It's allowing us to get out in front, which is key, especially as we continue to expand and diversify as a business and add new services.

Rob Howe IT Director, Guinness World Records.

 Challenges

"We cannot be confined by old ways of working…"

The rapid growth and diversification of GWR as a business over the past five years has equired a radical rethinking of its technology requirements. Under the guidance of Rob Howe, IT Director at GWR for six years, the company has pursued a strategy of digitisation, encompassing infrastructure, service delivery and security.

This strategy is underpinned by an overhauling of GWR's internal setup from an infrastructure and applications perspective. GWR's IT department has embraced the cloud, recognising that this supports the business's push to become more flexible, agile and dynamic in order to cope with the demands of a growing business.

Rob Howe explains: "It is the IT department's job to make sure we can respond to the ever-growing changes within our business model, so we can take up new opportunities and move into new markets. Going forward, cloud gives us far more flexibility to grow, rather than being constrained, and that's always my focus – that we have more options than less."

GWR is a truly global company; in the last six years the company's corporate footprint has oubled from three offices to six, with sites in London, Miami, New York, Dubai, Beijing and Tokyo, with additional remote workers placed at over 15 locations.

About AMC Networks

AMC Networks International (AMCNI), the global division of AMC Networks, delivers entertaining and acclaimed programming that reaches subscribers in more than 130 countries and territories and is responsible for highly acclaimed series including The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul. AMCNI consists of global brands, AMC and SundanceTV, as well as popular, locally recognised channels across various programming genres. In the UK, those channels include CBS Reality, Legend, Reality Xtra, Horror Xtra & Horror Xtra +1.

Challenges

Solution 

As an existing long-term customer, AMCNI selected Exponential-e out of several data centre providers to relocate its equipment into two Tier 3 data centres, providing redundancy for its production and DR media content. The design included over a dozen racks, with additional space made to house prebuilt IBM racks that had to be relocated in their existing configuration. Two 10Gb links were delivered between each data centre to provide resilient, high-speed capacity for large media content, with 2Gb of internet breakout for external access.

Since the downsizing of offices, AMCNI has realised a saving of approximately £1.3m on real estate costs, as well as a reduction in energy consumption and energy footprint. Staff have become more productive and invested by having the flexibility to work from home and remote locations, improving the work/life balance. AMCNI has also improved its sustainability metrics, as IT infrastructure is now located in purpose-built facilities that operate to BREEAM standards and use renewal energy sources.

The move to full-time hybrid working has been an excellent decision for us at all levels, but it wouldn't have been possible without the underlying technology infrastructure. We already knew and trusted Exponential-e, so they were the obvious choice to help us make the transition. Even with such a tight timeframe, they made sure the whole thing was completely seamless.

Nigel Proctor, International IT Director, AMCNI

About Havas

Solution 

Exponential-e worked closely with Havas to design a solution that would remove the complexity and duplication from the existing infrastructure and consolidate all 16 sites into a central Network, while ensuring each business unit remained secure from each other. Exponential-e engineers were able to overcome this challenge with a relatively simple Network design.

Single access points - To accommodate Havas' requirements, we deployed a multi-site Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) WAN solution using single, converged connections from each of the Havas offices. Each Havas business unit is now supported by our resilient Next Generation Network.

VPLS communities - To consolidate Havas' disparate WANs we needed to discover which agencies needed to be able to talk to each other. Once we had this information, we were able to group agencies into different VPLS pools to create mini-WANs. The fact that we were able to maintain LAN and WAN separacy means the solution is operationally simplistic and it gives Havas maximum control.

Centrally hosted hardware and services - We co-located the firewalls across two separate data centres using VLANs into the firewall. This means Havas can now benefit from centrally hosted firewalls which it has complete control over. Havas are able to change security policies and routing itself from one central point. The company also has centrally hosted Internet connectivity removing considerable complexity, duplication and cost from its wide area Networking.

Resiliency - Our pioneering NGN design in this instance was based on providing resilient and automated failover to secondary circuits at each site, whereby the local router will switch traffic automatically into the secondary circuit in the event of a failure on the primary circuit. In addition, we provided resilient connections to the centralised firewall to achieve automatic failover on the Internet service.

Convergence and separation - We created one unified Network but managed to maintain 100% security and separation for its individual business units. Most importantly Havas is in control and unnecessary cost and duplication have been eliminated.

 Challenges

There were a number of issues Havas had with its old Network. Firstly, the IP VPN solutions it was using required highly complex access-control lists on each site's CPE router to keep different business unit traffic secure from each other. This was proving very inflexible, time consuming and an administrative headache.

Havas' Network had also grown to include multiple Internet services which were operated by many of the individual business units. As a result of this, the company was having to manage multiple firewalls and Internet service suppliers which was proving to be an area of concern.

The business wanted to consolidate its Network of disparate Wide Area Networks (WANs) into one unified platform, whilst maintaining security between business unit communities. At the same time it wanted to centralise its Internet provision and security services so the company could eliminate a complex array of providers, bandwidths and underlying technologies.

About Jellyfish Pictures

Solution 

Jellyfish Pictures has partnered with Network and Cloud Provider Exponential-e to develop a new Cloud platform known as Desktop-as-a-Service for Graphic Processing Units (GPU) powered by NVIDIA GRID™ technology, which enables employees to work remotely without effecting quality, productivity or creativity. They can now utilise persistent virtualised desktops with all of their usual computing power, software applications and intensive creative tools. All their documents and files from their local storage are accessed directly from the virtual desktops giving seamless integration between Cloud resource and local network. Graphic artists and editors can work as if they were using a physical workstation, the new Cloud machines perform up to 3-4 times faster than normal desk-based computers performing like-for-like tasks as well as achieving 25-30 frames per second. This improves the productivity of graphic artists and enables the company to deliver faster turnaround to meet tight production deadlines.

Crucially, it also means that employees are no longer tied to a physical desk and have the ability to work from any device and any location, making the company highly flexible when bidding for future work. It has also supported other developments within the Jellyfish Group including the opening of their new purpose built, 4,000 square foot studio in Brixton, where 60 artists and supporting production staff are based. The new system means that work can be shared between studios, so that employees and contract/remote workers can collaborate on projects despite being based in separate offices.

Using Exponential-e's low latency, private Network powered by NVIDIA GRID™ technology gives the graphic artists access to all of the creative tools they need, from Nuke to Softimage, virtually, from any device anywhere in the world.

As they're essentially accessing a Data Centre, Jellyfish's creative team can harness the power of the platform for both application performance and rendering, but with asset management and storage taken care of too - so nothing would be lost if a computer or terminal crashed or failed.

"The nature of the VFX industry is project-based, and we often require technology resources and freelancers on demand. Exponential-e's solution enables us to respond quickly to these fluctuating project requirements" explains Jeremy Smith, CTO of Jellyfish.

"Scaling up and down for productions - where you might be operating remotely from several locations, such as on set, on location and in the studio, at speed with security and privacy center stage - is difficult to say the least. Operationally, we no longer need to rely solely on our existing architecture when further processing power or capacity is required. Instead, our staff can spin-up additional resources on demand."

Exponential-e's Cloud platform built on NVIDIA's GRID™ technology uses servers packed with high-performance GRID GPUs. VMWare's Horizon VDI platform provided the virtulisation, the low latency 100GigE Network between Jellyfish's two studios means that graphic artists using the virtualised desktops doesn't cause any problems with screen refreshes and rendering. With multi-million dollar production budgets in play the security of desktop virtualisation is of paramount importance. However, the hosted service that Jellyfish uses remains within its Local Area Network (LAN) and on the clean side of the firewall, meaning it doesn't transcend the public Internet. As a result, security and privacy concerns are negated.

This investment in Network resources was absolutely critical as the performance of all Cloud services are directly dependent on the speed of the network infrastructure, with which it connects to the Data Centre. When Jellyfish artists are working round the clock in different studios to a strict deadline, removing all potential loss of productivity from lag is vital.

 Challenges

Today, the firm behind the BBC's Inside the Human Body, Planet Dinosaur and commercials such as Peckish, sofaworks Sloth - Neal and the Natural History Museum Alive 3D, strives to remain at the forefront of technology and design by offering something extra, both in terms of creativity and approach.

Early in 2013 Jellyfish Pictures outgrew their Noho base in Margaret Street. Restrictions on power and space and with office space at a premium the challenge was to find a solution that would keep them in the heart of London's thriving VFX community without compromising on quality and client service.

Solution benefits

• The virtualised desktop environment has changed the way Jellyfish works and competes in the industry - the company is now capable of moving from a capital expenditure business model to an operating expenditure structure. This reduces much of the upfront costs when Jellyfish expands to take on a big project assuring that they can align budgets with projects. For the first time, the company can be highly flexible and confident when bidding for new work.
• Even more valuable, GRID™ technology has removed the chains between artist, studio and desktop.
• Jeremy Smith explains, "In the past, the huge amounts of processing power needed for VFX work meant that our artists, designers and developers were tied to a physical desktop. But now, the traditional VFX workstation has been transformed - by adopting a hybrid, Cloud-based platform we can work from anywhere and on any supported device. Through our work with Exponential-e and NVIDIA, we are able to create a system that allows work to be shared in real time between our studios so that our employees and contract/remote workers can effectively collaborate on projects all on the same logical workspace.
• Today, Jellyfish can foster a much more creative environment for its employees. Not only can they can easily share work in real-time between their two studios, work seamlessly from virtually any device and from any location, they're also able to hire the best creative, talent, regardless of whether or not they prefer to work remotely."