Aspera, an IBM Company, Powers Complex Digital Media Workflows for WDR mediagroup

AMSTERDAM - 11 September 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced at IBC 2014 that German media service provider WDR mediagroup (WDRmg) has deployed a complete suite of high-speed transfer and automation solutions from Aspera, an IBM company, to streamline complex workflows of large and wildly diverse volumes of digital media assets - the most prevalent form of Big Data. By speeding its workflow and scaling its capacity, WDRmg can now process and upload approximately 80 percent more video content to video streaming platforms for its customers.

As consumers continue to stream media at a record pace, content distributors are looking to media service providers to help them capture revenue from old and new content by preparing it for streaming services. WDRmg, one of the largest integrated media service providers in Germany, needed an efficient way to manage its complex workflows for processing content from multiple file formats for content digitizing, archiving and delivery, as well as marketing and advertising services. Serving as the media arm for German public broadcasting institution WDR, WDRmg also digitizes historical programming - often originating in outdated formats - from WDR's 40-plus year broadcasting history to prepare it for streaming services.

By putting Aspera Orchestrator at the center of its workflow management, WDRmg was able to integrate its array of existing subsystems with highly efficient, predictable file processing and delivery pipelines to give it complete control and transparency of the process. WDRmg ingests material from customers quickly and securely via high-speed Aspera transfer, completes processing and transcoding into required formats and distributes the resulting content to a variety of online streaming services. These performance and efficiency improvements enable WDRmg to significantly expand its capacity to supply high-quality content to 15 leading video-on-demand platforms, which exposes the content to a much wider audience.

With Aspera, we can now manage and control all processes centrally and automatically, resulting in much greater efficiencies, Markus Kreisel, managing director at WDRmg digital. Files are now picked up from the archive and automatically transcoded into the requested format without delay. Thanks to the Aspera solution, we are able to seamlessly supply content to video-on-demand platforms worldwide.

The power and flexibility of Aspera's FASP technology enables media enterprises like WDRmg to shorten and automate their production cycles, preserve their existing infrastructure, and securely deliver high-resolution media files to partners worldwide at maximum speed, regardless of file size, transfer distance or network conditions, said Arnd Kohrs, sales director at Aspera.

As part of this integrated end-to-end workflow, completed projects are automatically archived by IBM Archive and Essence Manager (AREMA), a multi-format media management and archive application. The addition of Aspera faspex provides WDRmg users with an intuitive, high-performance solution to collaborate, share and deliver large files company wide. Additionally, Aspera Console offers full transparency and accountability along the entire process chain with real-time notification, logging and reporting capabilities.

At IBC 2014, WDRmg will give conference attendees more insight on the solutions it implemented with Aspera to handle complex workflows. Sebastian Manemann, Transcoding Coordinator at WDRmg, will present the Powering the Workflow - an insiders look at how Aspera technology boosts WDR mediagroups content management system to meet customer demands" session in the IBC Content Everywhere Workflow Solutions theatre in Hall 9 on Friday 12 September at 4:00 p.m. local time.

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