ABP News Network (ANN) —one of the largest TV networks in
India—operates five news channels in Indian languages such as Hindi, Marathi,
Bengali, Punjabi, and Gujarati, and reaches out to more than 150 million TV
audiences per week.
Like most media businesses worldwide, ANN has been disrupted
by new technologies and rising consumer demand for immediate and ubiquitous
access to content. Unlike some industry participants, however, the
Noida-headquartered business has seized the opportunities presented by the
digital age. Its online news website—www.abplive.in—and app—ABP
Live—caters to more than 40 million monthly visitors.
The
Challenge
News in India can be more dynamic,
volatile and unpredictable compared to other international markets. This means
that traffic spikes in digital and mobile information services can occur at any
time of the day with minimal warning. An important report can increase traffic
in elections, which are held once a year, by three or six times.
Therefore, it was extremely important
for ANN to quickly adapt the technological infrastructure to these traffic peaks.
In addition, as well as international
consumers, the Indian public consumed more and more news about digital and
mobile services, as well as broadcasting and printing. Online uploaded videos
increasingly complemented the broadcast news and text services.
In 2013, ANN predicted that extending
the digital presence from a single website to a range of services could
increase page views from $ 150 million to over $ 500 million.
The company needed to sustain this
growth in a cost-effective manner while ensuring the responsiveness and
reliability required by digital consumers.
"Given all these factors, we were
looking for a robust, cost-effective, reliable and highly scalable
infrastructure," said Retesh Gondal, Digital Technology Manager at ANN.
Unfortunately, the existing technology
infrastructure of ANN Managed Service Providers was unable to meet these
challenges.
The agreement between the company and
this provider has made it difficult and expensive to increase its website to
handle peak traffic. In addition, ANN was unable to obtain the transparency
needed to control and optimize the use of infrastructure resources.
The company also risked giving
competing media companies a competitive advantage by bringing new websites,
mobile services and other products to market in just a few months, not just
weeks.
Due to infrastructure constraints,
publishers needed to spend up to seven minutes downloading a news video that
was many times longer than a media company operating in a highly competitive
marketplace.
Ultimately, ANN may not be able to
provide information quickly to respond to the immediate demands of viewers and
to position itself in the highly competitive digital information market in
India. In addition, the company was unable to position itself to penetrate new
geographic markets in a transparent and profitable manner.
Change of
Web Service Provider
ANN has re-integrated its web
infrastructure into an on-premises data center as an intermediate step in the
transition to a public cloud. To prepare for this transfer, Amazon Web Services(AWS) began due diligence on important public cloud services.
ANN's business and technology leaders
were aware that selecting the right cloud provider is critical to the future of
the business. ANN has taken advantage of the first digital media for digital information
and has set itself the goal of securing market leadership among readers by
providing compelling information content across a range of digital and mobile
channels.
This required relying on a cloud
provider that could quickly adapt to peak traffic and long-term growth in web,
mobile and video messaging traffic. In 2014, the company decided to migrate its
infrastructure, applications and services to AWS.
"We chose AWS because we are
flexible enough to balance our infrastructure costs and demand-side
consumption, and because we can move to the AWS cloud with ease and
simplicity," says Gondal. "AWS also specializes in infrastructure
services that enable companies like us to distribute video content and mobile
applications to users' smartphones, tablets, and PCs."
THE
ADVANTAGES
The use of AWS has allowed ANN to help
increase the number of page views from 150 million to 500 million, and to
accept high traffic spikes when important events, including elections, occur.
"The latest news in India can dramatically increase traffic, and we've
implemented a first serverless architecture on Amazon S3 that allows us to
manage traffic indefinitely," said Gondal.
Since migrating to the AWS cloud, ANN
has successfully expanded its product and service portfolio from a single
website to multiple websites, video content and a mobile application. "The
scalability factor of AWS gave us peace of mind that we could think more about
what we want to achieve with our apps than how we manage them," said
Ramakrishnan Laxman, director of digital activities at ANN.
Thanks to AWS 'competitive pricing,
including regular discounts, and the ability to pay only for the infrastructure
resources used, ANN was able to effectively control costs and budget.
"We're currently running 500 million page views at the same infrastructure
cost as before for 150 million pages," says Gondal.
In addition to cost control, the
company is now able to deliver new products and services much faster and
cheaper than its previous managed services environment. Publishers can now
download videos in less than a minute to meet their immediate needs, rather
than the six to seven minutes required by traditional infrastructure. This
allowed ANN to compete more effectively with its rivals. In addition, AWS ANN's
global presence allows it to expand beyond the domestic market into new
regions.
"The AWS team has always informed
us about the new cloud services they are introducing and how we can use AWS to
optimize our existing workflows," says Gondal.
The use of AWS enabled ANN to offer a
range of new products through advanced tools such as machine learning and
artificial intelligence. "Our experience with AWS is extremely good,"
says Gondal. "Although we came too late to enter the field of digital news
and video content, we have grown rapidly to become one of the leading providers
of these services to consumers in India." and beyond with AWS. "
Credits: AWS
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