AWS hosted BLAM scores goals for national Australian sporting body

The following case study was created by Blue Lucy partner Amber Technology and first published on their website.

A major national sporting body overseeing multiple competitions has undertaken a project to migrate and manage a sizable content archive while designing and implementing new media acquisition and distribution workflows.

To assist with this process, and following extensive market analysis, the entity chose to subscribe to the Blue Lucy Automation for Media (BLAM) Platform hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and managed through local ANZ partner Amber Technology.

The challenges

The national body was a fledgling organisation with no pre-existing media acquisition or distribution process, and no existing archive and media management strategy. With limited experience in this area, they called on Amber Technology’s Media Systems team to provide advice on the best way forward.

There were disparate archives from multiple agencies, metadata or content tagging did not exist, also there was no proxy content or web portal to view and manage assets. Multiple distribution endpoints often required unique content versions.

No media automation or orchestration existed, creating cumbersome work processes that hindered efficient management of media.

The solution

After extensive consultation with the customer, Amber Technology recommended the implementation of a core AWS-hosted BLAM platform with on-premise orchestration and application services within the broadcast services partner datacentre.

Blue Lucy facilitated the migration of assets from external storage repositories, cataloguing and indexing upon ingest.

Amber and Blue Lucy partnered together with the stakeholders to design and deploy a range of media workflows using the BLAM’s no-code workflow builder, including:

• Automated versioning, editing and branding of highlights content.
• Distribution of content to multiple partners and online destinations such as Brightcove and broadcast rights holders

Content metadata enrichment from external match statistical data sources made the management of storage and archiving easier for stakeholders with enriched data facilitating future search processes.

Tiered storage management via direct integration with AWS S3 storage provides the ability to easily scale in the future depending on their requirements.

Other features built into the agile system design included web-based editing and integration with Adobe Premiere Pro, automated dialogue transcription via a connector to the AWS speech-to-text AI service, and automated asset creation that is driven from the fixtures and match schedules.

The outcomes

The result of this project has been the development of a highly scalable and adaptable content platform ensuring the immediate and future requirements of the sport are supported.

Following the successful implementation there has been an observable reduction in editorial effort for media preparation and distribution.

A single content archive that is organised, searchable, browsable and enriched, together with automated storage management, has provided a simple and effective self-serve media access to the content library for all Clubs.

Julian Wright from Blue Lucy commented: “This project demonstrates the importance of finding the right technology partner for media automation and management solutions. The success of the collaboration shows developing a trusted relationship with experienced partners can help organisations achieve their business goals. “

Paul Devlin (AWS) said:

“Blue Lucy’s BLAM integrated seamlessly into the AWS platform, creating a system that is built for the future.”

Conclusion

Managing large content libraries and media distribution workflows can be complex and require specialist development to implement and adapt. The investment in the BLAM platform serves as an excellent example of how technology can be leveraged to simplify complex media workflows yielding immediate business benefits and significant long-term benefits.

The success of the collaboration between the client, Amber Technology and Blue Lucy is a testament to the importance of finding the right technology partner when implementing a media automation and management solutions. This ongoing partnership demonstrates how a trusted and experienced technology partner can help organisations navigate the complexities of media workflows and content management to achieve their business objectives.