Sun and public broadcaster WGBH Boston have announced accelerated plans to develop the first end-to-end reference architecture for a comprehensive digital asset management system using the SunTM Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) framework.

With the pending digital television mandate from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), upon release, the reference architecture can potentially save networks and television stations millions of dollars by providing the complete recipe for a proven, open, standards-based, end-to-end digital asset management platform. Without it, individual television stations and networks could spend a large portion of their IT budget on consulting services that would duplicate the efforts embodied in the Sun reference architecture.

"Every television station and network in the country has to activate a digital transmitter within the next six to twelve months, and there remain significant challenges to complete this transition," said Bruce Lyon, global manager, media and entertainment, Sun Microsystems. "WGBH teamed with Sun to create a total digital media storage and content management system that could one day be the roadmap for all television stations and networks. The goal of this effort is to avoid proprietary vendor lock-in and the consternation of trying to reconfigure their broadcast technology enterprise on their own."

"As the producer of more than one-third of PBS's prime-time national programming and Web content, WGBH has developed one of the more important media archives in the industry," said Dave MacCarn, chief technologist and asset management architect, WGBH. "Right now digital technologies are compounding the problem of long-term storage by flooding the marketplace with new file formats and proprietary storage devices. We chose Sun's open, standards-based approach (Sun ONE) in an effort to create a platform built for reliability, scalability, manageability and maintainability."

"The transition to digital television requires the broadcast industry to rethink its business strategy. Broadcast leaders like WGBH are discovering a real potential down the road to reduce overall production, distribution and storage cost, with another slam dunk ... the opportunity to deliver programming via any Web-enabled device," continued Lyon.

"We see two unique benefits using the Sun ONE approach," said Amy Rantanen, director, information technology and asset management systems, WGBH. "The first is an opportunity to better utilize our rich content. Second, and even more exciting, any efficiencies from re-distributed content can be redirected to further the mission of our public broadcasting organization."

WGBH saw the opportunity to consolidate editorial content onto digital media as a means of maximizing its value. Digital content can then be used for a variety of purposes, including distance learning, constituent relationship management and multi-channel distribution to other stations or through the Web community. [...read more...]

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