PHOENIX TV
EMC Isilon helps Chinese broadcaster exploit new
opportunities in HD content
INCREASING AUDIENCE SHARE, REDUCING
COSTS
Phoenix Television, a Hong-Kong based satellite broadcaster, wanted to grow its
sizeable audience share and increase ratings for programs accessed through its six
television channels. In addition, it wanted to increase advertising revenue by
providing high-quality video content and programs online. However, the company’s
Fibre Channel storage lacked the performance and scalability necessary to support
ESSENTIALS
Industry
Media and Entertainment
Company Size
2,500
Business Challenges
•
Fibre Channel storage lacked
the performance and scalability
•
company has reduced its costs due to increased efficiency of the content production
process and optimized storage utilization. The company has gained increased trust
from its customers, who can rely on data being available with no downtime.
ENVIRONMENT
Phoenix Television adopted a cloud architecture running on EMC Isilon S200 series
of revenue generation
Storage was complex to run
Achieved 20 percent reduction
in TCO
Increased speed of production
by 20 percent
•
As a result of Isilon high performance, Phoenix Television has increased audience
engagement by enabling faster, higher quality program development. Also, the
scale-out storage to speed access to the massive amounts of data required for high-
Results
•
After considering several solutions, Phoenix Television partnered with EMC, working
with ICS, and chose EMC® Isilon® S200 series scale-out storage.
needed to support new forms
and expensive to maintain
•
new forms of revenue generation and was expensive and complex.
definition video editing. EMC Isilon SmartPools® allocates less frequently accessed
data to an EMC Isilon X400 series for short-term archival, delivering a total of 420
terabytes of storage. The company uses EMC Isilon SmartQuotas™ to improve the
efficiency of its storage management further by partitioning storage according to
specific user requirements within the broadcast production process.
David Sun, System Maintenance Manager and Storage Architect at Phoenix Television,
says, “We had been running Fibre Channel storage which presented us with a range of
issues as we sought to diversify our interests across the Chinese language media and
Grew opportunities for new
entertainment industry. We wanted a long-term, robust solution for our cloud
revenue streams
computing strategy.”
Solutions
•
EMC Isilon S-Series
•
EMC Isilon X-Series
•
EMC Isilon SmartQuotas
•
EMC Isilon SmartPools
He continues, “Our relationship with EMC has been very simple: Both Phoenix
Television and EMC have deserved reputations in their own fields. We understand
EMC’s offering and EMC understands the kinds of needs we have as a media company.
EMC Isilon met our requirements in each of our core criteria of performance,
scalability, and stability, and ensuring compatibility with our existing software and
applications.”
CUSTOMER PROFILE
INCREASING USERS AND AUDIENCE NUMBERS
Phoenix Television has recognized tangible benefits by shifting its content and video
editing and program production to the EMC platform. All six channels broadcast highdefinition content and each program requires approximately 200 to 300 megabytes
per second of bandwidth. With up to 24 workstations involved in video production and
editing, high performance is critical to successful programming.
As a result of the scale-out performance of Isilon, Phoenix Television has increased
the speed of the production process by 20 percent and program quality has improved.
Sun says, “The production crew has more time for planning and creative activities,
which positively impacts the entire quality of the production process. Not only are we
able do things faster, we’re now in a better position to develop higher quality
programs that we can provide to other Phoenix Television outlets. Overall this helps
us drive increased users and audience numbers to our channels and partners
regardless of how they choose to access content.”
OPTIMIZING STORAGE UTILIZATION, REDUCING COSTS
The efficiencies achieved through moving to the Isilon platform have resulted in a 20
percent reduction in storage total cost of ownership.
“By changing the way we manage our data with Isilon, we’ve been able to increase
the efficiency of our content production process. That reduces our production costs
and consequently improves the quality of our programming. We can scale to meet the
performance required for delivering a high volume of high-definition content,” says
Sun.
“By changing the way we manage our data with Isilon, we’ve
been able to increase the efficiency of our content production
process. That reduces our production costs and consequently
improves the quality of our programming.”
David Sun
Systems Maintenance Manager and Storage Architect at Phoenix Television
With a tiered storage infrastructure, Phoenix Television is able to place its highdefinition video editing on the EMC Isilon S-Series cluster, which is optimized for highperformance workloads. Content is then moved to the Isilon X-series cluster to
achieve a balance between performance and capacity. With SmartPools, multiple tiers
of the Isilon storage underlie a single file system to simplify management and place
the production data in protected pools accessed according to business demands.
“We only need a single storage system to deliver all of our requirements for access to
data during the production workflow,” says Sun. “We can distribute the data
automatically so that the storage utilization is optimized as being the most costeffective for our production budget.”
EXPANDING POTENTIAL ACROSS SUBSIDIARIES
As well as developing content for traditional media, the company also aims to increase
the advertising revenue of its subsidiary Phoenix New Media by providing a range of
high-quality video content and programs targeted at capturing a greater share of the
Chinese language audiences accessing content online through mobile devices and
tablets. Along with its role as a television broadcaster, the company also has a longer
term goal to expand its footprint in the media and entertainment industry.
Company Overview
Phoenix Chinese Channel was
launched on 31 March 1996, with the
As Phoenix Television expands its influence and increases the volume of its highdefinition program production across its media channels, the Isilon storage has the
potential to support its subsidiaries’ interests. Phoenix Television can provide faster,
aim of offering quality content to
more efficient interactive services between its seven key subsidiaries and Hong Kong
Chinese communities around the
headquarters, as well as between different offices. There is also a dynamic exchange
world. Today, Phoenix Chinese,
of content between Phoenix Television and Phoenix New Media.
Phoenix Movies, Phoenix InfoNews,
Phoenix Chinese News and
Entertainment, Phoenix North
America Chinese, and Phoenix Hong
Kong channels together broadcast to
audiences in the Asia Pacific, Europe,
America, Africa, the Middle East,
Australia and New Zealand, covering
more than 180 countries and regions.
Phoenix New Media Limited, an
indirect non-wholly owned subsidiary
of the Group, is listed on the New
“With Isilon, we are now operating without any limits to the volume and quality of
content we can produce, which opens up new possibilities for Phoenix Television as a
company. By moving to Isilon storage, we’ve been able to provide opportunities for
our overseas subsidiaries to expand,” says Sun.
DEVELOPING CUSTOMER TRUST
Phoenix Television is capitalizing on the high availability of EMC storage to manage
the demands of running a 24-hour television broadcasting service and to gain
customer trust.
Sun says, “The reliability of Isilon was a critical selling point for us. We need a system
with proven high availability to protect our data and ensure we never experience
York Stock Exchange (NYSE: FENG).
downtime, and EMC has provided us with this level of confidence. In thinking to the
Phoenix New Media is a leading
long-term, our customers need to be able to trust that we have the right
global new media company with an
infrastructure in place to manage their content. We are confident that Isilon is the
integrated platform consisting of an
right infrastructure.”
Internet media website
(www.ifeng.com), mobile channel
(3g.ifeng.com and APPs), and video
channel (v.ifeng.com).
CONTACT US
To learn more about how EMC
products, services, and solutions can
help solve your business and IT
challenges, contact your local
representative or authorized reseller,
visit www.emc.com/Isilon, or explore
and compare products in the EMC
EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, Isilon, SmartPools, and SmartQuotas are registered trademarks or
trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. © Copyright 2014 EMC
Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 12/14 Customer Profile H13565.1
EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The
information is subject to change without notice.