Introduction

Since the company’s founding in 1996, Hong Kongbased Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings Limited has become recognized as a leading global Chineselanguage media provider. Phoenix TV is dedicated to delivering information and entertainment to Chinese viewers worldwide through its three main business units: Phoenix Satellite Television, Phoenix Weekly, and Phoenix New Media. These units operate six satellite TV channels that broadcast programs in the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa, covering more than 150 countries and regions.

Challenges

In 2012, Phoenix TV completed the construction of an international media center in Beijing, following the establishment of media centers in Hong Kong, London, and Los Angeles. Serving as a key program production center for the Asia Pacific region, the Beijing multifunctional media center focuses on producing television programs as well as handling significant administrative and commercial activities.

This media center also provides production facilities for the use of other companies, generating revenue for Phoenix TV and building a network of industry partners.

This complex media operation depends on Information Technology (IT) in all parts of the company, from program production to Office Automation (OA), enterprise operation, and Human Resources (HR) management. Regarding the IT infrastructure for the media center in Beijing, Phoenix TV executive said, “The IT system functions as the media center’s neural system, covering a variety of subsystems, such as the media service, OA, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) subsystems. As such, the Beijing international media center needs an advanced, reliable, energysaving, and cost-effective IT system.”

In the second half of 2011, the Phoenix TV IT department invited Huawei to help design and build a new media center IT system to meet both TV production and business needs. The TV production system had to support tasks such as collecting and editing material, creating and broadcasting programs, and storing data. The business requirements included a wide range of IT services such as OA, enterprise communications, campus networking, video conferencing, and a comprehensive set of enterprise application systems. The latter included Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Adding to the complexity was the need to offer IT rental services to Phoenix TV’s business partners.

Using a traditional decentralized IT model to meet these needs had drawbacks. For example, the time needed to implement the IT system could be prolonged, which would increase operating and procurement costs. Additionally, disparate IT systems would need to be deployed independently, which would probably result in inconsistent Operation and Maintenance (O&M) interfaces.

To avoid these issues, the Phoenix TV IT department wanted to use a collaborative IT implementation model. As a Phoenix TV IT manager told Huawei, “We need an end-to-end solution. Obviously, if we use multiple independent systems, we will suffer from complicated system management and extra initial investment and subsequent O&M costs.”

• Flexible, on-demand IT resource utilization

Phoenix TV uses its four international media centers to broadcast programs and timely information to audiences around the world. These media centers provide 24/7 services, ensuring that Phoenix TV is the leading global provider of Chinese-language media.

To prepare for broadcasting most HDTV programs, Phoenix TV station must collect source media, transcode data streams, edit video clips, and store data in the program production systems. These operations require significant computing, network, and storage resources.

Traditionally, expensive workstations were deployed in each of the departments responsible for media production. This ensured that work could be done quickly but also resulted in low IT resource utilization. A program production team would not use its IT resources around the clock, so the server resource usage at Phoenix TV ranged from 5% to 10%.

On the other hand, the reporting departments sometimes could not get the necessary IT resources to handle breaking news in a timely manner. If Phoenix TV kept extra IT resources on hand to cope with these requirements, the resources would sit idle most of the time.

To improve resource utilization, Phoenix TV planned to develop a cloudbased TV production system. This system would maintain the company’s technological superiority while reducing device procurement and system O&M costs. At the same time, the company needed an optimal balance between security and efficiency, as well as convergence of office and TV production systems.

On-time and accurate program broadcasting is a basic requirement for maintaining a TV station’s reputation and revenue. To prevent delays and errors, stations usually set up strict security rules for production systems. For example, a station may forbid access from office networks.

For this reason, post-production operations such as editing, composition, and special-effects processing can be performed only on systems intended specifically for program production. However, program producers would prefer that office and program production systems be converged to enable pre-editing in the office systems when the production systems are unavailable. A converged approach then makes it easy for producers to upload the pre-edited programs to production systems for refined editing when the production systems become available.

A related issue is that most media set-ups allow users to access the Internet only from office systems, yet producers need to download images, text, and video clips from the Internet for use in programs. Phoenix TV decided to resolve these issues by connecting the office and production systems in one secure platform. With the right design, this platform could ensure high efficiency without compromising data security.

Huawei Solution

In December 2011, Huawei established a multi-disciplinary project team to perform a comprehensive requirements analysis and architecture design for Phoenix TV’s international media center in Beijing. Phoenix TV approved Huawei’s end-to-end solution in March 2012.

• Solution overview

Huawei designed a data center with servers, storage, network, security devices, and Unified Communications (UC) systems. This solution integrates all IT applications in a single physical infrastructure, allowing for unified system deployment and O&M. Compared with traditional IT systems, Huawei’s solution reduced construction time by more than 30% and initial costs by more than 20%.

• Physical infrastructure

Huawei designed a modularized equipment room to segment the IT system into three parts: the server equipment room, storage equipment room, and network equipment room. The power supply, data links, and key service modules are all deployed in redundant mode to ensure system reliability. Advanced techniques such as enclosed cold-air areas and precision air conditioning optimize Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) to 1.5. Additionally, modularized equipment rooms support service-based implementation and feature high scalability, maximizing Phoenix TV’s versatility and minimizing expansion costs.

• Virtualization

Huawei provided FusionSphere virtualization software to transform the existing data center into a distributed cloud data center. This cloud supports the wide array of services that Phoenix TV needs.

To support TV production work using the popular One Net architecture for TV stations, Huawei partnered with Dayang (a China-based broadcasting solutions provider) to build a complete network based on media resource pooling. Dayang’s media production system, built on Huawei’s cloud platform, can flexibly control Virtual Machine (VM) resources in the resource pool, based on time segments and services, which significantly improves server resource usage from less than 10% to over 60%. In addition, One Net allows Phoenix TV to tap extensive IT resources rapidly, meeting program production requirements when incidents occur.
For the office systems, Huawei used a cloud desktop solution that allows users to access the data center using Thin Clients (TCs) as well as mobile devices. Huawei used VM clusters to enable business partners to access the cloud desktop system, expanding the service coverage of Phoenix TV’s data center.

• Security

As part of the comprehensive security protection for the IT system, Huawei applied unified security policies in the data center to eliminate security risks, such as operating system vulnerabilities and viruses, protecting system security when production team members search the Internet for report materials. To prevent equipment room intrusions, Huawei provided an enclosed modularized equipment system and access control unit. For network security, Huawei deployed office and production systems on different sides of the campus network to physically separate these two systems. For data center security, Huawei deployed two Huawei CE12800 core switches in cluster mode and separated services using advanced CSS + VS technology. This approach minimizes up-front costs, while improving system reliability.

For IT system security, Huawei physically separated office and production system hardware. To enable network interconnection while ensuring data security, Huawei developed a production security center — a buffer zone between the two systems. Production teams can access the production system from the office system and transmit data between the two systems using web portals on the production security center. This design integrates the office and production systems while ensuring the data security of the production system.

Customer Benefits

Huawei’s end-to-end ICT solution meets Phoenix TV’s requirements for technological superiority, reliability, energy consumption, and cost-effectiveness. Huawei and Dayang’s cloud-based One Net media solution helped Phoenix TV improve key service development capabilities:

• The comprehensive, end-to-end solution reduced construction time by more than 30% and device procurement costs by more than 20%.

• The cloud-based One Net media solution improved server resource utilization to more than 60% and increased program production efficiency by about 30%.

• The cloud desktop system supports approximately 1,000 users with mobile office capabilities, reducing costs by 30% compared to traditional desktop PCs.

• The advanced data center solution uses multiple energy-saving techniques to reduce the PUE to 1.5, support unified O&M, reduce the number of IT maintenance personnel by 50%, and improve TCO by 20%.