Technicolor Electronic Distribution Services

ABOUT US

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. & SyncCast (Technicolor EDS)

Overview

Customer Profile:
SyncCast is a leading outsourced application delivery network and digital media services provider. The Burbank, California-based company specializes in the delivery of digital content over IP networks. SyncCast was recently acquired by Technicolor as a new member of their Electronic Distributions Services (EDS) division.

Business Challenge:
Faced with unprecedented demand for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Live Marketplace, a one-stop virtual shop for downloadable videos, games and movies, Technicolor EDS needed to ramp up its backend infrastructure for the storage component of its content delivery network – and fast.

Solution:
Technicolor EDS turned to Fujitsu’s 10Gb Ethernet switches. Powered by the MB7Q3070, the world’s first single-chip, 12-port 10Gb Ethernet switch chip, Fujitsu’s XG series features industry leading performance with latencies as low as 450 ns in a compact form factor. The XG family is able to offer this performance at an affordable price point while maintaining a power-efficient design.

Benefits:

Realized a return on investment in a mere 90 days
A projected 20 percent boost in new business over the next three years
Ability to provide high-definition video while maintaining top-notch delivery speed and network performance levels

Challenge

Technicolor EDS is a leading outsourced application delivery network and digital media services provider. The Burbank, California-based division of Technicolor specializes in the delivery of digital content over IP networks.

Unlike traditional content delivery networks that simply store and distribute content, Technicolor EDS offers clients, ranging from the Motion Picture Association of America to Wal-Mart Music, an impressive roster of end-to-end solutions. These include content preparation and publishing; content delivery optimization; complex digital rights management; back-end integration with billing and payment platforms; and services for storing, managing, securing, and reporting the consumption of digital content.

So it should come as no surprise that when Microsoft began its search for a company that could provide a secure, centralized video hosting delivery platform capable of supporting its Xbox Live Video Marketplace, the Redmond giant selected Technicolor EDS. Experts in media processing and able to provide flexible content delivery and powerful digital rights management, Technicolor EDS proved the perfect fit.

Designed for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, Xbox Live Video Marketplace serves as a one-stop virtual shop where millions of Xbox Live members across 25 countries can download their favorite movies, television shows, and videos. Unveiled in November 2006 to an eager gaming community, Microsoft’s new service “caught on like wildfire,” according to Lance Ware, the Technicolor EDS CTO. In fact, within just two months of its official release, Xbox Live Video Marketplace became the second largest video delivery service on the Internet.

The service’s overnight success, however, also presented a serious dilemma. Technicolor EDS’ existing network attached storage infrastructure required the scalability to support such unanticipated market demand. After all, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 marked the first and only gaming console to provide HD and standard-definition TV shows and movies straight to a console’s hard drive – a service requiring the storage and delivery of thousands of files, many exceeding 6 Gigabits in size.

“We built for the needs Microsoft projected but what the company projected was way out of the ballpark,” says Ware. “In the end, we needed to be able to scale to meet this surprising audience demand.”

Solution

Armed with only 1Gb Ethernet switches, Technicolor EDS had to ramp up its backend storage infrastructure – and fast. At first, Technicolor EDS’ storage solution team considered bonding multiple 1Gb ports into a single group to attempt to achieve the required bandwidth. Certainly, this approach would have increased capacity, but not without creating ten-times the amount of cable, insufficient scalability, troubleshooting hurdles and costly connector failures.

“We would have wound up needing more switches, more cabling, and more ports,” says Ware. “The system would have become harder to scale and more difficult to maintain.”

Seeking to create a higher performance and more scalable architecture in record time, Technicolor EDS evaluated Fujitsu 10 Gb architecture. The result is a custom solution comprised of Fujitsu’s revolutionary 10Gb Ethernet switches, Technicolor EDS’ existing network attached storage system, Microsoft Windows Enterprise Server 2003, and proprietary software. Powered by the MB7Q3070, the world’s first single-chip, 12-port 10Gb Ethernet switch chip, Fujitsu’s XG series offers industry leading performance with latencies as low as 450 ns in a compact form factor. The XG family is able to offer this performance at an affordable price point while maintaining a power-efficient design. Presently, Technicolor EDS’ storage architecture is comprised of two pairs of 10Gb Ethernet switches for each of its two data centers, with a third data center currently in the works.

“Adding Fujitsu’s 10Gb Ethernet switches allows us to support thousands of Xbox Live Video Marketplace members at very high download speeds,” says Ware, noting that transfer speeds have surged a whopping 30 percent since introducing the switches.

What’s more, Fujitsu’s XG Architecture IC’s Ethernet Layer 2 capabilities grant Technicolor EDS high-performance switching at a low cost which, according to Ware, has helped the company promptly “maximize our return on investment.” And the MB87Q3070 XG architecture IC delivers 240Gbps non-blocking performance at exceptionally low latency.

Benefits: Reaping ROI

By bolstering an existing network attached storage device with Fujitsu’s 10Gb Ethernet switches rather than replacing it altogether, Technicolor EDS has created “cost efficiencies that are just unheard of,” says Ware, who calculates that building such a system from scratch would have cost ten times the amount.

“Fujitsu’s 10Gb Ethernet switches are very cost effective in the 10Gb world. And the incremental cost over 1Gb equipment was well worth it for the simplified management, cabling and troubleshooting alone,” says Ware.

In fact, Technicolor EDS realized a return on its investment in Ethernet switches within a mere 90 days – cost savings that are now being funneled into business-critical areas such research and development.
Customer satisfaction guaranteed

But an appealing bottom line is only part and parcel of Technicolor EDS’ storage success story. Inability to accommodate unanticipated audience demand for Xbox Live Video Marketplace would have been a major set back for the Technicolor EDS team. Instead, “by upgrading and building out our 10Gb Ethernet infrastructure,” says Ware, “we were able to scale to very high user demand levels while maintaining a consistent level of delivery speed without comprising performance.” A feat that has also helped Technicolor EDS buttress its industry reputation as a content delivery innovator.
Getting ahead of the curve

If Microsoft’s Xbox Live Video Marketplace is any indication, downloadable media promises to take the content delivery world by storm. That’s good news to Technicolor EDS. By leveraging Fujitsu’s XG 10Gb Ethernet switches to create a high-performance platform with extremely low latencies for an industry behemoth such as Microsoft, Technicolor EDS has earned a valuable first-to-market advantage in today’s competitive content delivery network industry.

“We’re way ahead of the curve in terms of resolving storage and network performance issues for large file content delivery,” says Ware. It’s a reality that has not gone unnoticed among today’s major content delivery providers as Technicolor EDS prepares for a projected 20 percent boost in new business over the next three years. And that’s no game.”

For Additional Information:

Ayumi Sakoda, Marketing Coordinator
Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc.
1255 E. Arques Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94085-4701
Ph: 408-746-7297
asakoda@us.fujitsu.com

Copyright 2007 Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. All rights reserved. Fujitsu and the Fujitsu logo are registered trademarks and The Possibilities are Infinite is a trademark of Fujitsu Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.