Discovery, Fox NE&O, SDVI, AWS, Evertz Win 2019 Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards

Discovery, Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television), SDVI, Amazon Web Services, and Evertz have been awarded a 2019 Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for their work in pioneering a public cloud-based media supply chain for content ingest, management, and delivery.

Media supply chain refers to the application of supply chain principles to create, manage, and deliver the right content and rich media experiences from content providers, creators, and owners to consumers on the devices and platforms of their choice. The model creates opportunities to significantly increase agility and efficiency. To meet viewer’s demand for reliable, high-quality video experiences at scale, media leaders increasingly turn to the cloud to improve economics, flexibility, and reliability.

“Discovery was the first media company to move our entire media operation, from production to distribution, into the cloud,” said Brinton Miller, EVP of Technology Strategy & Architecture, Discovery. “SDVI and AWS’ technology allows us the flexibility and scalability to create new linear and direct-to-consumer products exponentially faster than we could in the past. Going all in with cloud and automated supply chain was key to building products like Food Network Kitchen, a first of its kind view-and-do app, which we successfully launched last year.”

In 2015, very few broadcast technology vendors had a public cloud strategy. Both Discovery and Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television) turned to SDVI and AWS. Today, Discovery and Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television) are leveraging the cloud to meet their customers’ rapidly changing demands by using a combination of the SDVI media supply chain platform; AWS compute, storage, and media services; and Evertz linear, media asset management and content supply chain solutions.

“In 2015 we established a ‘2020 Vision’ strategy that included migrating to public cloud infrastructure. A key challenge was that very few broadcast technology vendors had a public cloud strategy at that time. We took a chance and signed up as the founding customer for SDVI, betting on the founders who we had worked with in the past,” says Christopher Blandy, EVP, Technology Solutions, Walt Disney Television. “We established a small internal team who, along with SDVI and Amazon Web Services, rallied the vendor ecosystem towards a new approach. After several years of hard work, the results speak for themselves. Today, every single piece of content delivered to us – programs, promos and advertisements – is delivered via this cloud-based platform. This has enabled us to shed legacy on-premises systems, create a self-service platform for our operations teams and begin to harness other innovative cloud technologies. We also delivered tremendous business value through improved productivity, lower operating costs, and more resilient disaster recovery capabilities.”

By moving their media supply chains to the AWS Cloud and leveraging the innovation brought by SDVI and Evertz, Discovery and Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television) were able to automate and simplify the ingest of a high volume of file-based content and associated workflows, minimizing processes that were manual or repetitive.

“We’re honored to be recognized as part of the team that supported the visionary work of these two media giants. The teams who led this effort had a clear vision, pushing everyone involved to think critically and creatively about ways to optimize every aspect of the media supply chain – and ultimately help their businesses become leading examples of what is possible for media,” said Lawrence R. Kaplan, CEO and co-founder, SDVI.

Utilizing SDVI and AWS’ platform, Discovery was able to reimagine all aspects of its media supply chain and operation. This allowed them to more easily to create infrastructure that powers new viewer experiences, like direct-to-consumer products that create a new way for Discovery viewers to enjoy Discovery programing. Having Discovery’s entire supply chain in the cloud allows the media leader to fully support its existing video business while moving faster and more flexibly into new business challenges. For example, going all in with cloud and automated supply chain was key to Discovery’s ability to build products like Food Network Kitchen, a first of its kind view-and-do app, which the company successfully launched last year in just 10 weeks due to the ability to scale out resources using AWS.

“What we hear from our customers is that moving their supply chain to the cloud allows them to move much faster. As an example, using AWS customers are able to integrate new content libraries into their supply chain in days or weeks, compared to months or years in the past,” said Alex Dunlap, General Manager, AWS Elemental. “This speed and agility explains why Discovery and Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television) have reimagined the traditional media supply chains with the AWS Cloud to meet the massive scale of consumer demand for new kinds of content and viewing experiences. We’re excited about what they’ve built for their viewers, and honored by the recognition of this achievement by NATAS.”

Now, every single piece of content delivered to FOX NE&O (Walt Disney Television) – programs, promos and advertisements – is delivered via the cloud-based platform. This has enabled FOX NE&O (Walt Disney Television) to reduce time and expense spent maintaining on-premises systems. It also has created a self-service platform for its operations teams that improved productivity, lower operating costs and more resilient disaster recovery capabilities.

“It is an honor and a privilege to be recognized along with Discovery, Fox NE&O, AWS and SDVI for this distinguished award. The vision and leadership provided by Discovery and Fox NE&O has been absolutely key in driving forward numerous innovations,” said Dan Turow, VP, File Based Solutions, Evertz. “We thank them for their extensive partnership and the collaborative work we have done together in creating, deploying and running these massive scale cloud deployments. The agility, scalability and flexibility of what we have jointly accomplished is truly amazing and demonstrates how cloud technologies can be leveraged in the ever-changing media and entertainment space.”