The BBC is planning to spend £1.3bn on new technology in
the next seven years, as it looks to revolutionise the way it makes
television and radio programmes.
The corporation is also aiming to significantly reduce its core IT
costs to support the initiative, a move that has produced £38.4m in
savings in the past 16 months.
Speaking to Computer Weekly at the IT Directors Forum on the Oriana
last week, BBC chief technology officer John Varney said the
initiative, dubbed One Vision, will bring web principles to the
somewhat dated methods of programme-making used by most
broadcasters.
"At the moment, the vast majority of programme content is stored in
tape form, which makes accessing and searching it very difficult,"
he said. "By creating a commodity network, we will make
programme-making more interactive."
The initiative, funded by commercial means and not the licence
payer, may prove critical for the BBC as it strives to make the
most of digital broadcast technologies.
The move towards what Varney called an "enterprise-wide programming
environment" is very much a step into the unknown for the BBC, he
said.
"We aim to create a network environment that has never been
attempted before in broadcasting. The sheer scale of it is what
makes it so daunting.
"To put it into context, if all our radio and TV content was stored
as IT data we would be creating 13Tbytes of data every week."
Varney likened the initiative to News Corporation's mid-1980s move
to high-tech printing operations in Wapping. Other publishers
followed suit, revolutionising the print industry.
Saving money is key to the success of the initiative and Varney has
set ambitious targets for cutting IT costs. "We spend far too much
on [unnecessary] technology. Since I started 16 months ago, I have
already cut £38.4m in IT costs, largely by deferring projects that
we will not be able to start for sometime anyway, such as networks
for yet-to-be-built buildings. I am aiming for a significant cost
reduction in core IT spend by 2005."
However, he said the project would also improve quality for
programme-makers.
The first stage of One Vision - syndicating BBC TV national news
content to users' desktops - will go live by the end of the year.
The major proof-of-concept pilot for the technology will be next
year when it is used for the production of wildlife documentaries,
Varney said.
The BBC hopes all programme production will use the new network by
2010, he added. It plans to use Foundry Networks for its
infrastructure and either Hewlett-Packard, EMC or Sagitta for
storage.
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