The BBC has signed its third major technology deal in a
matter of months, after announcing that it will work with
IBM to develop
media content distribution systems and improve the sharing of
business data across the organisation.
Last year, the BBC signed a major content distribution and
technology deal with Microsoft, and last week teamed with
Google-owned YouTube to produce content for the video clips
distribution network.
The IBM deal will cover several projects, and one of the first
initiatives will focus on applying state-of-the-art image/video
search technologies to CBeebies and CBBC children’s programmes.
This IBM Research system, code-named “Marvel”, has the ability
to visually analyse images/video to categorise the content based on
appearance and make it more searchable.
The project will use Marvel to create a set of multimedia
interactive search experiences for accessing BBC children’s content
on-line.
Ashley Highfield, BBC director of future media and technology,
said, “This alliance with IBM will offer new and genuinely
innovative services to our audiences. For example, combining the
BBC's massive TV and radio archive with IBM's cutting-edge research
into video and audio search technology, should provide the means to
unlocking huge latent value in our long tail of content.”
In addition, IBM will work with the BBC’s official technology
partner Siemens to deploy a pilot of Big Blue’s Media Hub
technology, in order to trial new business processes and ways of
working amongst the BBC’s creative teams.
The pilot follows the recent deployment by Siemens of IBM’s
WebSphere products, which sit at the centre of the BBC’s service
oriented architecture.
IBM is also discussing potential collaboration projects with the
BBC in areas including content distribution, customer relations
management, joint research, and rights management. Siemens will
work in conjunction with the BBC and IBM on these projects too.
BBC and Microsoft work on new distribution
channels
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk