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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Adopts the Cloud in Bid to Save Costs

July 05, 2014
by Staff Writer

The state television organization in the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), has adopted the cloud. As part of its Virtual Local Radio project (ViLoR) project, the corporation has moved four of its local radio stations into the cloud in a bid to save costs through shared infrastructure. The move will also save the corporation having to manage upgrades - upgrading the technology the stations currently utilizes takes six to eight months per cycle. Based in the cloud, the same procedure could take only eight weeks.

BBC Radio Northampton, BBC Radio Suffolk, BBC Essex and BBC Three Counties Radio have initially gone live in the cloud. Although the corporation will remain in full editorial control, and the radio programmes the stations produce will be mixed and streamed in a studio, the technology utilized to manage production has been moved to a data center. The 4 stations involved in the initial project will be monitored over the next nine months and if successful, the approach could be used at the BBC’s 39 other local radio stations.

The BBC also believes being based in the cloud will improve audio quality as data is processed using a single infrastructure rather than different formats. The cloud approach also adds a social media element to productions, with tools to utilize Twitter and Facebook messages alongside Skype calls made to the stations. It will also allow stations to share content more easily.

The BBC will be very keen to save costs using the cloud, but will monitor the initiative very carefully. The corporation’s last initiative, the Digital Media Initiative (DMI), was introduced to transition the BBC from the use of stored video tape. After five years of development, the project was shelved at a cost of £100 million ($171 million) to British tax payers.

Do you know of any other media organizations moving to the cloud? Let us know the details. Add your comments below.

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