21 April 2009

CIO Joe Simon says that digitalising its content is top of Viacom's agenda.

Media conglomerate Viacom is working with Microsoft to digitise its content libraries. And the company expects to be able to make its assets work harder once they are fully digital, says CIO Joe Simon.

Owning iconic media brands such as MTV, DreamWorks, Paramount and Nickelodeon, Viacom is among the world’s leading players in the broadcast industry. And, as such, like other global media players, the company has a huge and ever-growing library of content items – shows, movies, audio and the like. Managing this library, given its size and the complexity of Viacom’s many routes to market, is a major challenge.

For media companies, programme assets are sources of both opportunities and potential problems. Opportunities, because the modern converged world provides almost unlimited openings to reuse content across multiple platforms, meaning that the heavy investment needed to produce exciting content can be recouped more quickly, and the potentials for ongoing revenue are enhanced; but problems because the sheer scale of a media giant’s production and content management operation makes for a logistical challenge more akin to a distribution or manufacturing supply chain environment.

This is why media companies have sought for some time to digitise their content. The storage and movement of huge numbers of video or audio tapes is an expensive business, with many potential disconnects.

As with previous Connections featured company Ascent Media, Viacom’s solution is to digitise content, and to invest in the development of a digital asset management (DAM) system to keep track of, and better utilise, that content. CIO Joe Simon says that, although a relatively recent convert to the DAM mantra, he sees clearly the benefits the system could produce. “We have been looking at DAM since 1998,” he explains. “But for much of that time, it always seemed like a solution looking for a problem. DAM is like a big database, it’s an enabling technology that allows you to do other things with your data. You don’t implement the database for its own sake: what you are really implementing is a system that uses that database. DAM is a tool that allows us to find new solutions to some of our business problems.”

Even after the 2005 demerger that saw the CBS broadcasting business become a separate operation, Viacom’s business interests encompass a vast range of services. As well as its movie production interests exemplified by Paramount and DreamWorks, the group has extensive operations in cable TV, through channels such as MTV and Comedy Central, TV production, gaming and new media. As such, says Simon, the challenge of the digital supply chain is complex, and becoming more so as the group seeks increasingly to look for ways to repurpose content across multiple channels, platforms and locations. “We have big initiatives under way in terms of cost reduction, and we’re putting a great deal of emphasis on high definition technologies,” he says. “Both of these programmes would result in a substantial increase in the volume of tapes we need to store. That’s why digitisation is so important for us.”

“Once upon a time, we produced a show, we put it out, say on MTV, and that was that,” he goes on. “But now, the situation is completely different. We have had to learn about workflow management and streamlining of operations, so we put in place a project called Materials Management on the production side. The challenge is to get content from where it is produced to where it is distributed – and both of those could be one or many locations. Distribution points in particular are becoming more numerous, and that compounded our problems in terms of managing the flow of content. Nowadays, we distribute content through video on demand, direct to operator (DTO), Web sites and partners, on top of our normal channels. On the production side, we are constantly carrying out shopfloor-type functions: bringing together materials from various suppliers and splicing them together into fresh product. A programme could be made of multiple shows or edit sessions. We are mixing ads, promos and billboards–and the whole thing becomes a huge assembly line.

And it is too expensive to manage that in the way we used to. So we have had to ask ourselves how we can streamline these processes and create a materials movement process that is entirely electronic. But one big difference between our digital supply chain and the kind of physical supply chains you see in other sectors is that when you set up a manufacturing process, you tend to stick to it. We need flexibility. We mustn’t put in place systems and processes that are inflexible.”

Working closely with Microsoft, Viacom is making rapid steps towards the deployment of an enterprise-wide digital asset management system. A piloting approach has been vital, Simon explains. “If we’d started a five year project and told people we wouldn’t be able to deliver anything usable until the end of that five year period, I don’t think there would have been much appetite for it,” he says. “We wanted to have an overall framework first. It was something that evolved over time – we wanted to handle material flow all the way from content completion to distribution. But we also wanted to look for small scale wins that would help us get buy-in from the rest of the business, although components had to fit into the overall framework. A good example of this is the work we have done on content movement across locations.”

At the centre of the Viacom DAM strategy is the library management system. This has been built by Simon’s team with assistance from Microsoft. “Library management was the biggest step for us,” he says. “The system is built around a taxonomy we understand, and that is capable of dealing with assets in any format. It has grown up over time, and as a result of our work with Microsoft we have been able to move to more modern technology. Now, we are finally moving to a service oriented architecture (SOA). But there is still some way to go. For example, we don’t yet have a good solution for the automated ingest mechanism, through which content is added to the library. That process is still fairly manual and time consuming, as there’s no really ideal solution available on the market at the moment. Once we had a number of these components in place, we realised the time had come to put in place a bus that could handle workflow and deal with the sheer volume of content we produce. We are currently looking at using Microsoft BizTalk to handle those workflows, but again, we are trying to break it down into chunks. We don’t want to try to do it all at once.”

Our biggest challenge, the place we had to make most changes, has been converting the systems into an SOA architecture. That’s where we’ve had the most help from Microsoft

Joe Simon, Viacom For Viacom, the DAM strategy is all-encompassing, covering as it does both the content creation and distribution parts of its business. “The mission statement for our DAM project is to make it possible to gain access and deliver content within our family in a seamless manner,” says Simon. “Now, I would say we are about 60-70 per cent down that road, and we are starting to see some real benefits. It has become a little easier for us to keep costs down, because we have better control. And the single biggest bang for the buck will come from our ability to move our stuff around.”

He cites the production of trailers and promotional clips as a good example of this. “We have 60-plus MTV outlets around the world,” he explains. “Previously, each would produce its own promos. Now, that’s all changed: we have central design studios producing a consistent look and feel, and the promos are shipped globally. That wouldn’t have happened without the DAM. This translates into cost savings, but also into look and feel improvements that make the channel more watchable across the world.”

Viacom’s partnership with Microsoft has been central to the entire DAM strategy. “All of the various components are built on some form of the .NET Framework,” says Simon. “Our biggest challenge, the place we had to make most changes, has been converting the systems into an SOA architecture. That’s where we’ve had the most help from Microsoft. Our scheduling systems, broadcast systems, library management, our workflow tools–these are all based on SQL Server and .NET.

“From Microsoft we have received extensive technical help and architectural help in terms of framing the solution. We decided to create an overall framework and attack it in pieces. But we needed help in creating the framework itself.”

“It’s hard to fathom how far this project has to go,” Simon reflects. “As we enable new capabilities, those capabilities will themselves open up further needs. Suppose we manage to get the whole process streamlined and automated: I guarantee we will see many new opportunities as a result. One obvious opening is the potential forgreater sharing of content creation opportunities. Now, we have central studios for look and feel. Can that be moved into programming itself? Our primary inefficiency has always been the fact that we use tape. Digital content, by contrast, opens up new opportunities for customisation. Automatic segment stitching is fairly straightforward. So we will have more opportunities to redeploy and repurpose content, and get more value from our investment.”

“In the end DAM is a tool, just like any other,” says Joe Simon. “It doesn’t solve anything on its own. But it gives us a great opportunity to find new ways to solve real business problems. And that’s the reason we are doing it.”

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Microsoft Connections in Communications magazine.

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