Corus prepares for the future of entertainment - IBM
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Case Study Industry: Media & Entertainment Solution: Services Geography: Ontario, Canada Corus prepares for the future of entertainment Software-defined networking from IBM and Cisco enables service innovation Building on its strategic alliance with Cisco, IBM® Global Technology Services® helped Corus Entertainment (external link) move to a performant, scalable and highly available network architecture that will support the ongoing evolution of its digital services for the next decade. “IBM will certainly be a preferred partner for future networking engagements.” - Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network Operations, Corus Entertainment
Case Study: Corus Entertainment
By replacing its legacy networking
environment with next-generation
Cisco Catalyst 9300 and
Cisco Nexus® 9300-EX Series Switches
Switching on (external links), Corus Entertainment has
created a future-ready platform for service
new services
innovation in the years ahead.
Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network Operations Business Impact
at Corus Entertainment, explains, “Our • Boosts network backbone
corporate network supports many bandwidth from 40 Gbit to
mission-critical services, so maintaining
100 Gbit, creating headroom
high levels of availability is a top priority. At
for future data growth.
the same time, we see that digital tools will
play a crucial role in the development of new • Cuts network latency from
products and services for customers, and we 15 ms to 9 ms, a reduction
aim to ensure that the corporate network is of 40 percent that facilitates
never a roadblock to innovation.”
the deployment of real-time
digital services.
She continues, “By working with IBM
and Cisco to move to a brand-new • Enhances network availability
network—powered by the open, by 32 percent, helping to
extensible, and software-driven ensure 24/7 uptime for
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure mission-critical services.
[ACI, external link]—we’ve already more than
doubled our bandwidth, slashed latency • Achieved a zero-disruption
by 40 percent and lifted availability by migration to the new network
32 percent. These capabilities give us the infrastructure, minimizing
confidence that we can be a more effective impact on business users.
partner to the business, and spin up new
infrastructure rapidly to enable future • Enables automated
service innovation.” provisioning and monitoring
services, predicted to help
boost operational efficiency
and cut time-to-market for
new services.
2
Case Study: Corus Entertainment
Changing
the channel
“We’ve been delighted with
Corus Entertainment has relied on Cisco “Whatever the future holds, our objective
the help we received from
solutions to support its networking is to ensure we can respond with agility IBM Global Technology
requirements for many years. to the needs of the business—without Services during the
compromising on the availability of migration, as well as the
With the company’s existing Cisco switches existing services, or sending operational ongoing assistance we now
approaching end-of-life, Corus saw an costs soaring.” enjoy from IBM Technology
opportunity to enhance its services at
Support Services.”
the corporate data center. The aim was In its compute environment, Corus
to ensure that the new network could harnesses virtual servers powered -Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network
accommodate anticipated growth in by VMware vSphere. Corus saw that Operations, Corus Entertainment
the volume and velocity of data, and extending the efficiencies of virtualization
scale rapidly in line with emerging to the network environment would help
business requirements. it to achieve its goals, and looked for a
solution that offered the latest advances in
“Two key networking capabilities we software-defined networking (SDN).
targeted were ease of deployment and
scalability,” confirms Shweta Bajaj.
“Although we don’t know exactly what the
future requirements for digital services will
be, the disruptive impact of digital media
in the last decade shows us that change is
almost inevitable.
3
Case Study: Corus Entertainment
Selecting the
right partners
To help reduce the business risk on She adds, “Another important factor in
About Corus
its journey to the new networking selecting IBM was their strategic alliance
infrastructure, Corus Entertainment with Cisco. As well as having deep
engaged IBM and Cisco to provide expert expertise in Cisco networking solutions, Corus Entertainment Inc. Studios, a globally recognized
consulting, integration, and support the IBM team presented side-by-side with (TSX: CJR.B, external link) is producer of hit scripted and
services. The company engaged IBM Global their counterparts from Cisco during the a leading media and content unscripted content. The company
Technology Services to assist with the selection process, which went a long way to company that develops and also owns innovative full-service
consulting, design and implementation demonstrating the close contacts between delivers high quality brands and social digital agency so.da,
of the data center migration project, and the two organizations.” content across platforms for lifestyle entertainment company
IBM Technology Support Services to deliver audiences around the world. Kin Canada, leading 2D animation
ongoing support and maintenance. Engaging audiences since 1999, software supplier Toon Boom and
the company’s portfolio of children’s book publishing house,
“Before we embarked on this project, we multimedia offerings encompass Kids Can Press. Corus’ roster of
scored a number of leading IT vendors 33 specialty television services, premium brands includes Global
across several delivery areas,” comments 39 radio stations, 15 conventional Television, W Network, HGTV
Shweta Bajaj. “The offering from IBM Global television stations, a suite of Canada, Food Network Canada,
Technology Services really stood out. Not digital and streaming assets, HISTORY®, Showcase, Adult Swim,
only did IBM bring a clear vision for the animation software, technology National Geographic, Disney
new networking architecture, they also and media services. Channel Canada, YTV, Global
presented a compelling roadmap for the News, Globalnews.ca, Q107,
implementation and beyond. IBM is truly a Corus is an internationally Country 105, and CFOX, along
one-stop shop to serve our needs, and their renowned content creator and with broadly distributed Canadian
consultants gave us great confidence that distributor through Nelvana, a streaming platforms STACKTV,
IBM had the skills and experience to make world class animation studio Nick+, the Global TV App and
our project a success.” expert in all formats and Corus Curiouscast.
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Case Study: Corus Entertainment
By moving to Cisco switches with
native support for Cisco Digital Network
Unlocking the Architecture (DNA, external link) and Cisco
ACI, Corus Entertainment aims to harness
benefits of machine-learning-driven automation to
reduce the time and manual effort required
“Because of the close
automation to manage, monitor, and scale its network.
strategic alliance between
“Although we’ve not yet had an opportunity to IBM and Cisco, there was
put the automated provisioning capabilities never a need for us to go
of Cisco ACI to the test, we’ve already been back and forth between
impressed by how much easier the solution them to validate our
makes it to understand the status and overall high-level architecture
health of our network,” says Shweta Bajaj. designs or hardware
“To date, we’ve only used Cisco DNA on configurations.”
a small scale, by pushing out Cisco IOS®
upgrades to our switches from a single point -Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network
of control. Looking to the future, we believe Operations, Corus Entertainment
that Cisco DNA will make a big difference
to the way we provision new infrastructure.
For example, if a new use case from the
business requires us to stand up a significant
amount of networking equipment, Cisco DNA
will help us avoid time-consuming manual
configuration processes—saving time, and
helping our networking team stay lean
and agile.”
5
Case Study: Corus Entertainment
First, Corus Entertainment worked with
Cisco to assess its existing networking
Future-proofing infrastructure and map out the optimal
upgrade path. Following this engagement,
the network Corus decided to deploy Cisco Catalyst 9300
and Cisco Nexus 9300-EX Series Switches,
with Cisco DNA to accelerate and simplify Solution
management, and Cisco ACI to facilitate components
network automation.
• Cisco Nexus® 9300-EX Series
“Because our switches were approaching Switches (external link)
end-of-support, we set aggressive deadlines
• IBM® Global Technology
for the project,” explains Shweta Bajaj.
Services®
“A zero-disruption switchover to the new
network was absolutely vital. As well as • IBM Technology Support
essential communications technologies Services
such as telephony, voice-over-IP, and
Microsoft Exchange email servers, our
corporate network also delivers services for
our broadcast teams, such as our broadcast
scheduling and archiving systems. If any of
these systems went offline unexpectedly, the
business impact would be enormous—and we
simply couldn’t afford unplanned downtime.”
She continues, “Working together with IBM
and Cisco, we painstakingly tested the new
network infrastructure and performed a
gradual, phased deployment. Thanks to
our diligent approach to testing and timely
support and guidance from the IBM and Cisco
teams, we successfully made the transition
to our next-generation network infrastructure
with zero impact on business operations.”
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