BBC Leverages IoT for Real-Time, Customizable, and Interactive Content Delivery

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster and one of the largest media organizations in the world. The BBC is known for its TV and radio services, and it also provides content through online platforms. The BBC iPlayer is an internet streaming service that allows users to watch a variety of BBC content online, while the BBC Sport website provides sports news, live action, scores and highlights. The BBC is committed to delivering high-quality content to its viewers and listeners, and it continually seeks to innovate and improve its services.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) faced several challenges with its legacy systems. For the BBC iPlayer, the legacy system was slowing productivity, innovation, and content delivery. The growing content required massive scalability and faster response times. For the BBC Sport website, the challenges were the integration of diverse data, such as statistics and videos, rapid application development to meet game deadlines, scalability to support tens of thousands of transactions per second, and the utilization of open standards for mobile delivery. The BBC needed to upgrade the iPlayer to support a growing user base, deliver content that could be viewed on multiple devices, and personalize that content. The BBC also wanted to deliver real-time, customizable, and interactive online content for the Summer Olympics.

The BBC turned to MarkLogic for solutions. For the iPlayer, MarkLogic provided a cloud-based operational data hub. This solution allowed the BBC to handle three billion requests within the first year of production through the cloud. For the BBC Sport website, MarkLogic provided a cloud-based operational data hub for data integration, semantics, and multi-device delivery. This solution allowed the BBC to handle 25,000 transactions per second and 45 billion requests total. With MarkLogic, the BBC team was able to make content available to viewers in minutes, not days. By reducing the number of systems in its tech stack, the BBC also dramatically reduced IT costs.

• The implementation of MarkLogic's solutions resulted in several operational benefits for the BBC. The improved response times and scalability of the iPlayer led to increased user satisfaction. The agile infrastructure allowed the BBC team to make content available to viewers in a much shorter time frame. The BBC Sport website was able to deliver real-time, customizable, and interactive online content for the Summer Olympics, handling an enormous number of requests with high availability. The BBC also received numerous industry accolades for their Olympic coverage, showcasing its industry leadership. Overall, the solutions provided by MarkLogic enabled the BBC to maximize its content value with speedy data integration and app development.

• Query times dropped from 20 seconds to 200 milliseconds for the iPlayer

• The iPlayer handled three billion requests in its first year

• The BBC Sport website handled 25,000 transactions per second and 45 billion requests total