1. WHITE PAPER: Mobile Content Delivery for Media Industry
Consumers, Content
and Cloud: What IT
leaders in every media
organisation should know
Table of Contents
2 edia study: two sides
M 7 t’s the message, not
I
of the coin the medium
4 he two must-haves
T
for media providers: a
robust cloud platform
and application
performance
monitoring tools

2. As the internet has made it easier than ever to access media
services, consumers are at the forefront of a digital revolution,
leaving many content providers’ traditional revenue models
struggling to keep pace.
The media industry is evolving. It’s not just digital technologies but an emerging
participatory media culture, fuelled by blogs, user generated content and social
networks that are transforming the relationships and practices through which media
organisations have historically operated and created value. As readership figures
and advertising revenues in printed publications dwindle, established content
providers are to seek a sustainable, profitable business model for the internet age:
one that can satisfy consumer appetites for rich media at increasing volume and
velocity, support a first-class user experience and be successfully monetised.
What challenges and opportunities does this present for media organisations in a
digital, device-driven world, and what tools and technologies can be harnessed to
conquer today’s trans-media landscape and create compelling experiences?
Media study: two sides of the coin
There are two discrete trends disrupting established media industry principles
and practices, demanding the reconfiguration of the content value chain:
technological and people.
Technology
Innovations in communications, devices, platforms and delivery have turned
passive consumption into active participation and brought unprecedented
personalisation to mass media. Equipped with increasingly powerful mobile
technologies, users consume content whenever and wherever they want, and
across multiple devices. They flit between a desktop PC, laptop, smart phone and
tablet depending on the context — time of day, location, purpose or even frame of
mind — and expect the transition to be seamless.
While the traditional ‘wired’ market was dominated by a single standard and
business-driven, the ‘wireless’ market is heterogeneous and consumer-driven. Mobile
devices change so rapidly, they are perceived more as fashion accessories than tools,
and multiple operating systems and versions are in concurrent use. The BlackBerry,
once the corporate stalwart, is no longer the de facto device for business users,
especially since Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies have enabled other
devices and operating systems to gain a legitimate toehold in many organisations.
This means content providers cannot afford to restrict their focus to a single
platform, but must instead be device-agnostic by default. Mobile application
development strategies must take into consideration multiple operating systems
and support current, past and future releases.
Meanwhile, technologies like Adobe Flash are turning developers into designers
and vice versa. This is enabling a new interplay of creative, commercial and
technological skills, and it is anticipated that the latest HTML authoring tools will
ultimately do the same in the mobile space.
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3. People
For any content provider, a change of mindset is required when it comes to the
user, who is, in essence, in charge and at the centre of everything. The boundaries
between B2B and B2C audiences are increasingly blurred, as all content is
consumed by individuals with wants, needs, preferences, values and variable
attention spans. Traditional media and content companies are having to reinvent
themselves as consumer businesses, serving two types of digital experience or
states of mind, rather than two discrete audiences:
• n Lean Forward mode, users tend to have a short attention span and scan rather
I
than read, actively looking for content, perhaps multi-tasking — most commonly
seen on the desktop PC
• he Lean Back experience is more immersive, with the user in consumption
T
mode, characterised by a longer attention span — analogous to print or
television and frequently seen in smart phone use
The tablet is the first device that attempts to cross the boundaries by
supporting both types of user experience, a phenomenon increasingly referred
to as “curl-up computing”.
No longer prepared to be dictated to by linear media schedules, people are
becoming active information-seekers. In fact, many consumers no longer regard
traditional content providers as their go-to sources of insight and instead wait for
mainstream and niche news to be filtered through social channels, via links shared
by people or brands they trust and respect.
Digitisation of content has arguably led to commoditisation, and
digital natives’ expectations of a ‘free lunch’ have spawned gloomy
predictions for the news and music segments in particular. The
challenge is to identify innovative monetisation models to ensure Mobility: from ‘nice to have’ to
survival, rather than a ‘pay for everything’ or ‘pay for nothing’ ‘social necessity’
approach. Many media businesses are emulating the economics
of software providers, for whom the cost of creating something 5.1 billion – the number of people on
of value is high, but the marginal cost of distributing it to each the planet who own a mobile phone —
consumer is low. but only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush
However, with any content behind a paywall, on-demand spending 68 minutes – the average time it
is driven by the quality and consistency of the user experience, takes to report a lost mobile device
ease of access and relevant content. Brands such as Facebook, (compared with 26 hours to report a
Google and Apple have defined consumers’ expectations for the lost wallet)
“it just works” technology experience. Consumerisation has also
3 hours – the average time people
led to rising expectations in the workplace in terms of simplicity,
spend socialising on a mobile device
usability and elegance — not always the hallmarks of corporate IT.
— twice the time people spend eating
Tolerance of delays or disruption to the user experience is low, and
forgiveness is largely dependent on uniqueness or relevance of the Source: HubSpot Inbound
content itself or the provider’s brand equity. Internet Marketing
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4. Performance and prediction: the primary IT challenges for
media organisations Brands such as Facebook, Google and
What these trends in technology and human nature mean for the Apple have defined consumers’ set-
media industry is that the user experience is almost as important point for the “it just works” technology
as the content itself, and great content means nothing if the experience.
user experience is poor. Facebook has undeniably set the bar
for performance with response times of just 0.75 seconds, while
LinkedIn and YouTube hold the top two spots for availability at
99.96% and 99.91% respectively1. So it’s hardly surprising that
consumers are increasingly intolerant of slow or unresponsive
service: according to a survey conducted by Equation Research
and commissioned by Compuware, 74% of mobile phone users will
wait five seconds or less for a page to load before abandoning it,
yet 77% of top companies’ mobile sites exceed this 5 second target.
In practice, three out of five mobile web users will not recommend
a slow-loading site to others, and two in five are unlikely to return,
resulting in loss of revenue and credibility.
Predicting workload is somewhat easier for business content providers — they
are likely to be able to estimate maximum load fairly accurately, based on a finite
subscriber base, and ensure their data centre has the necessary headroom to
comfortably accommodate it. However, this invariably means poor capacity
and CapEx utilisation due to over-provisioning. Content providers such as news
organisations and broadcasters, on the other hand, may be able to predict specific
patterns of demand, such as weekend traffic related to sports or light entertainment
programmes, but cannot foresee when a global event or phenomenon will cause
a huge surge in demand. Unless they have provisioned for the best or worst case
scenario — a costly exercise — the servers are likely to be overwhelmed.
Orchestrating an ‘anytime, anywhere, any device’ content strategy requires the IT
departments of media organisations to adopt new tools and develop a new level
of technical fluency.
The two must-haves for media providers: a robust cloud platform and
application performance monitoring tools
The first objective of any modern media strategy is to ‘get in the game’ by
mobilising existing content, preferably through dedicated mobile applications
rather than via a browser. A shrink-to-fit approach to smaller screens won’t be
sufficient to grab and hold consumers’ attention. The second phase is to ‘get
ahead of the game’ by using mobility to provide a differentiated experience that
addresses previously unmet needs. Elements such as contextual awareness,
gaming and social integration will become key to developing engaging and
immersive digital experiences.
When laying the foundation for any multi-platform strategy, media IT
departments need two robust cornerstones: the ability to meet peaks in demand
through cloud enablement and meet customers’ performance expectations
through application performance management.
1 Alertsite quarterly report, Q1 2011 4

5. Harnessing the hybrid
Media organisations need to be able to operate, maintain and 74% of mobile phone users will wait 5
deliver a “pipeline” of content with a wildly scalable IT environment. seconds or less for a page to load, yet
The elasticity of the cloud can help multi-platform broadcasters 77% of top companies’ mobile sites
manage both linear growth and great uncertainty created by: exceed this.
• he ubiquity of networked devices that have made media access
t
a core component of their proposition
• obile content consumption becoming part of consumers’ daily lives
m
(YouTube alone accounts for around 25% of mobile data traffic worldwide)
• sers cramming increasing volumes of media consumption into everyday life
u
through multitasking, rather than chronological exposure.
The media industry appears to be ahead of the curve relative to other industries
when it comes to cloud adoption. Many content providers already have a private
cloud behind their own organisational firewall that goes some way towards
providing the economies of virtualisation. Others adopt a “rent first, buy as a last
resort” approach to compute resource and have well-established arrangements
with third party infrastructure providers.
A hybrid cloud solution, in which the private cloud interoperates with the public
cloud, offers the best of all worlds by allowing extra capacity to be obtained from
the public cloud (known as “bursting”) during spikes in demand while keeping
mission-critical services and data within the organisation’s control. The hybrid
cloud offers myriad benefits including:
• n agile and flexible approach
A
With operational flexibility, quick start-up and back end serviceability, the hybrid
cloud is well suited to highly variable or unpredictable workloads. As a self-service,
metered utility, it provides ubiquitous network access for any web-enabled client
device on a pay-as-you-go basis. It allows media organisations to build agility
and controllability into their back-end IT, without the huge demands on capital
expenditure. Its responsiveness enables short-range, tactical planning, eliminating
the need to build a data centre for long-term strategies which may be eclipsed by
global events, changing consumer behaviours and preferences or technological
disruption. The cloud additionally supports the emerging model of “online always,
publish sometimes” by allowing media organisations to become digital media
centres that also happen to publish a printed edition at fixed intervals.
• cost-effective resource pool
A
The media industry has an appetite like few others for storage, processing,
analytics and management resources. Publishers, media buyers and search
providers rely on “clicks” as the only consistent, global measure of value in their
activities, which means a growing volume of data to be analysed — especially
given that the value of media assets can change rapidly over time. The cloud
not only offers the compute and storage resources that media companies need
to deliver content, but also the ability to analyse massive volumes of data to
understand user behaviour and calculate the real value of advertising space —
indispensible to a growing number of monetisation models.
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6. • platform for innovation
A
The cloud enables rapid integration of media, applications and The cloud enables short-range, tactical
services with targeted distribution channels such as Facebook, planning, eliminating the need to build
YouTube and Salesforce.com. By allowing media to be highly a data centre for long-term strategies
targeted in real-time towards a consumer’s immediate needs (and which may be eclipsed by global
therefore much more “clickable”), it enables organisation to shift events, changing consumer behaviours
from a ‘market of many’ to a ‘market of one’. Once content can be and preferences or technological
integrated with commerce, all manner of interesting possibilities disruption.
arise for dynamic advertising that can lead directly to immediate
action or a purchase. Cloud-native media means the cloud is
not simply a cost-effective platform for hosting content, but a
business platform for commercialising it.
• means of satisfying mutual interests
A
As traditional media revenue models falter, there is a tendency for some
organisations to perceive consumers as ‘the enemy’, as expectations of free
content and behaviours like file-sharing have become the norm. However, the
real threat for content providers is growing complexity. Consumers are no
longer prepared to fit their lives around linear broadcast schedules or someone
else’s business model. Social networking has made complex, adaptive demand
for media an everyday phenomenon. The cloud, without doubt, offers the best
single platform for exchanging and evolving media with multiple audiences,
using multiple devices in multiple contexts under multiple business models, in
ways that benefit media organisations and consumers alike.
Application Performance Management Tools
It’s not enough to deliver tailored and engaging content — application
performance affects the bottom line. Applications don’t always perform optimally,
especially with the added considerations of cloud delivery and access via a
variety of devices and platforms. Issues often go undetected until end users
complain. The result is a major hit to adoption, customer loyalty, and the bottom
line. Monitoring and testing are therefore essential to delivering a high quality
mobile site and native application experiences.
• eb Load Testing Tools
W
It’s vital to be able to identify scalability and performance problems across
the entire application delivery chain — ideally down to pinpointing the
By allowing media to be
specific line of code that is to blame. Web load testing tools generate high-
highly targeted in real-
volume, real-world loads to produce an accurate measurement of response
time towards a consumer’s
times and the end user experience under load, especially the performance
needs, the cloud enables
of mobile devices. By being able to gain an “outside in” view of performance,
organisations to shift from a
problems can be identified with third-party components, such as shopping
‘market of many’ to a ‘market
carts, geographical variations in response times, browser-specific issues and
of one’
mobile content delivery issues. These tools facilitate collaboration between
development, testing and operations, reducing friction and test iterations,
and enabling speedier and more proactive resolution of performance and
scalability issues before they become apparent to end users
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7. • ser Monitoring Tools
U
User monitoring scrutinises performance from the only point It’s vital to be able to identify scalability
of view that really matters — the consumer’s. These tools are and performance problems across the
designed to measure the end user experience, performance and entire application delivery chain —
traffic metrics directly from the consumer’s browser and mobile ideally down to pinpointing the specific
device. Page views and conversion or abandonment rates can be line of code that is to blame.
correlated with mobile site and application performance and end
user satisfaction. This allows media providers to gain deep insight
into how their end users are actually behaving as they view the
content and detect/fix problems before users are even aware of them. This
means they safeguard their all-important brand reputation by reducing drop-
out rates due to frustration with performance issues, and optimise mobile site
and application performance. Crucially, these tools also enable applications to
be tested under ‘real world’ conditions to ensure they work across all browsers,
devices, geographies and networks loads to provide a consistent, truly global
user experience.
• loud Provider Monitoring Tools
C
Cloud-enablement is central to an anytime, anywhere, any device media
delivery strategy. The trouble is, cloud providers typically measure their
own performance in terms of availability, but this is not the same thing as
“performance” — the measure by which end users will judge a site or mobile
app. Before migration, the media organisation must ensure applications will
perform as planned once beyond its own firewall. Cloud provider monitoring
tools provide holistic application performance monitoring that allows the media
company’s IT department to rapidly isolate the fault domain — whether that is
the data centre or WAN, the ISP or the internet, the browser or device, or a third
party provider. This helps to ensure that media organisations can enjoy all the
benefits of the cloud while minimising any potential performance issues arising
from third party components throughout the entire application delivery chain.
It’s the message, not the medium
As a trans-media narrative is becoming commonplace, organisations that used to
think in siloed terms of print, web, TV, radio, music or video are now well-advised
to focus on the message rather than the medium.
The cloud has great potential to shape the future of the industry, especially cloud-
native media, which offer exciting new opportunities for content providers and
broadcasters to transact in real-time with their audience, socially or commercially.
Consider the cloud as the digital assembly line that enables mass customisation of
media and advertising services to those in charge — the consumers.
That’s why a cloud-enabled media strategy is not just a matter of
having the right infrastructure — it’s about delivering the right tools,
the right controls and the right user experience. Cloud providers typically measure their
own performance in terms of availability,
For more information call us on +44(0)207 400 5600, but uptime does not guarantee
email emea-sales@savvis.com or visit performance — the measure by which
http://www.savvis.com/en-us/Savvis/media end users will judge a site or mobile app.
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visit www.savvis.co.uk or
call +44(0)207 400 5600.
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