IN MY VIEW
emerged as ideal to support ITV’s
‘Cloud-based technology
working culture’ Paul Dale, ITV
PLAYOUT MOVING TO THE CLOUD
As part of its fi ve-year transformation plan, ITV is embracing cloud-based systems from Apple and Google as it sets about upgrading its technology infrastructure, says ITV chief technology offi cer Paul Dale
the newly created post of chief technology offi cer, I joined a company for which technology had not been a focus in
W
recent years, but whose business was depend- ent on it. An interesting challenge lay ahead. With that in mind, one of my key objectives has been to embark on upgrading the tech- nology infrastructure to not only transform the way we get our content to customers, but also to give our staff the tools and systems to help deliver ITV’s wider fi ve-year transforma- tion plan. Over the past year, we have taken giant leaps in realising this ambition but, of course, there is still a lot of work to be done. As an organisation, we had to recognise the limitations of our existing infrastructure and address what steps needed to be taken to bring about an environment that would encourage communication and collaboration
10 | Broadcast TECH | November/December 2011
hen I arrived at ITV in January in
across the business to realise our technology goal. ITV as a whole has fully embraced the plan, and the appetite for change is one of the things that makes my job so exciting. Beginning with the basics, my team and I
initially spent time looking at various com- binations of hardware, software, email and document-sharing solutions. Through this research, cloud-based technology emerged as the ideal technology to support ITV’s working culture. As a result, we are in the process of adopt-
ing technologies from Apple and Google to facilitate a cloud-based system. This brings a number of benefi ts to the company, including cost-effi ciency, increased data storage and mobility. These will be hugely advantageous for the company and offer increased fl exibility for our staff, enabling them to work more effi ciently, collaborate better with others, and be even more creative than before. We are also working on a fi bre-optic net- work incorporating eight key sites including
London, Manchester and Leeds. This is a further step towards a fully tapeless environ- ment and will allow us to send hundreds of hours of content to national sites in minutes. It is designed to have rapid scalability and a lower total cost of ownership – providing us with the infrastructure for the future. We have also moved forward in our
strategy for data centre consolidation across the entire company. We are now hosted in state-of-the-art facilities at both Greenwich and Slough, where we have re-platformed nearly all legacy systems on new virtualised infrastructure, delivering reliability, a multi- site capability and massive energy savings. ITV has made great progress in updat- ing the business. I am very excited about the changes we are undertaking, and what is in store. The most important outcome of our technology transformation will be that it enables us to concentrate on what we do best: delivering amazing content to our consumers. ➤ Paul Dale is chief technology offi cer at ITV
www.broadcastnow.co.uk/technology
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40