4-page Case Study - Posted 8/7/2007

Views: 258

Rate This Evidence:

Sociedade Independente de Comunicação

Portuguese Television Station Speeds Up Global News Reporting with Collaboration Tool

Sociedade Independente de Comunicação (SIC) operates terrestrial, satellite, and cable TV channels, offering news and programming for women and youth. It also runs an international channel that broadcasts in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Australia. SIC editors work with journalists who file news reports globally. The increasingly competitive global media industry requires that editors and reporters be able to contact one another, as well as transmit data and graphics, quickly and reliably. To improve communications, SIC deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging. Now users receive e-mail messages, faxes, and voice mail in a single integrated inbox. Solution benefits include faster access to colleagues, more flexibility in storage of digital media, and a single point of contact for technical support.

Situation

Sociedade Independente de Comunicação (SIC), one of three network television stations in Portugal, is part of the increasingly competitive global media industry. Based in a suburb of Lisbon, the station operates several channels available on satellite and cable TV in Portugal, offering news and programming for women and youth. It also operates an international channel that broadcasts in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Australia. In addition to its 700 employees, SIC works with dozens of freelance journalists who supply it with news reports in these countries. To do this, they must be able to contact SIC news editors, download assignments, and upload news reports, photographs, and video clips easily from almost anywhere in the world.

With the wide availability of digital cameras, both still and motion, SIC journalists can bring news of interest to Portuguese viewers from cities around the world, especially those such as Boston, Rio de Janeiro, and Macao, where large numbers of either Portuguese-speaking citizens or their descendants still live. Even so, many of these journalists can only rely on having a 64K connection to the Internet. In places without a dependable infrastructure, such as Iraq, journalists use a virtual private network (VPN) connection and Web browser–based e-mail to exchange information.  In addition, SIC journalists purchase a multitude of handheld communication devices on their own, and the SIC IT staff frequently had to resolve access issues related to those devices.

“As a communications company, it is important that people be able to contact each other quickly, especially when working under tight deadlines,” says João Quezada de Almeida, IT Director for SIC. They also need the option of contacting colleagues through voice mail or e-mail, whichever is more appropriate for the conversation. When news editors—who work in three eight-hour segments—finish their shifts, however, they have very little time to communicate to their successors what stories they are working on or whom they expect to receive stories from in the next few hours. It is crucial that each news editor quickly grasps what stories are under way, says Quezada de Almeida: “The ability to communicate both with internal colleagues and freelance journalists affects our performance and our ability to deliver news and entertainment.”

Solution

We spent €50,000 on the entire project, including servers and licensing. We estimate that we will recoup our investment in six months, simply by improving the effectiveness of our communication.  João Quezada de Almeida IT Director Sociedade Independente de Comunicação

Begun in February 2007, the upgrade was completed in June 2007. “We spent €50,000 (U.S.$67,000) on the entire project, including servers and licensing,” says Quezada de Almeida. “We estimate that we will recoup our investment in Exchange Server 2007 within six months, simply by improving the effectiveness of our communication.”

The key to that effectiveness is the ability to contact editors and reporters and have the message appear in a single inbox. It is especially important in parts of the world where infrastructure may be inconsistent or unreliable. “The editors and reporters can manage all their communication through Exchange Server 2007,” says Quezada de Almeida. Reporters with a better phone connection than data connection can leave voice mails for editors; to retrieve messages, they do not have to check voice mail, e-mail, or inbound faxes (assuming a fax machine is even nearby) individually for messages because it’s all available in a single place— their inbox.  And they can access their inbox through the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client, Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, or even by calling in to Unified Messaging and using Microsoft Office Outlook Voice Access to have their e-mail messages and calendar items read back to them.

Because some reporters may have as slow a connection as 64K (one in the Maldives has only a 5K connection), SIC also set up Office Outlook Web Access accounts for journalists. Although it was available previously, many journalists only realized its capabilities after they were briefed on the upgrade. “Some people did not know they could access mail through a Web interface,” says Quezada de Almeida. “Now I have more people asking how to use it.”

Some remote users with laptops connect to their Outlook 2003 accounts using Outlook Anywhere, formerly known as remote procedure call over HTTP (RPC over HTTP). With this Exchange Server 2007 feature, they access information without the need for a VPN connection.

No matter what the remote access challenge, Quezada de Almeida finds a solution. During the European soccer finals, many reporters could only use their 64K modems in the stadiums, which was too slow to get scores updated quickly. Quezada’s team responded by deploying 3G wireless cards to mobile devices running Windows Mobile® version 5.0 software so that information could be relayed using the Windows® Messenger version 5.1 instant messaging application.

SIC also plans to deploy Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, with Exchange Server 2007 as a foundation, to make communication more flexible. Key features of Office Communications Server 2007 include a number of improvements to instant messaging and presence capability, such as integration with Exchange Server distribution lists, as well as the addition of software-powered voice over IP, allowing users to make, receive, and manage voice (phone) calls using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 running on their computer.

Once SIC implements that solution, each employee will have a four-digit extension, so that anyone on the network will be able to reach a colleague (or a freelance journalist who has been given a corporate phone number) anywhere in the world by dialing the extension. The caller will not need to know whether colleagues are in their office or traveling, because presence will allow them to see whether the person they need to reach is online and available. This feature will be especially helpful in contacting journalists who are frequently away from their office.

Benefits

It is a competitive advantage for SIC to disseminate news quickly. The company benefits from the deployment of Exchange Server 2007 because of the speed and agility with which information gets exchanged. The solution also makes it possible for SIC to take advantage of increased storage capacity, efficient messaging management, and a single point of contact for technical support.

The ability to communicate affects our performance and our ability to deliver news and entertainment.  João Quezada de Almeida IT Director Sociedade Independente de Comunicação

Smoother Handoff of Information

When editors change shifts, and they need to hand off information or messages from journalists in the field, they can simply forward the messages in their unified inbox to the next editor, who, in turn, can access that information no matter whether it is a text or voice message.

Faster Data Transmission

By using either the Cached Exchange Mode or Outlook Anywhere features, users can download e-mail more quickly and access their messages even without being connected to the corporate network or VPN. Quezada de Almeida says users see little performance difference between connecting directly to the network and using Outlook Anywhere. 

More Flexibility in Storage

Because Exchange Server 2007 runs on more-powerful 64-bit server computers, SIC can increase the storage capacity it offers reporters—from 25 to 250 megabytes—without performance degradation. As digital media becomes more common, this gives reporters more flexibility in filing and storing graphics.

Efficient Messaging Management

Quezada de Almeida uses the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer tool to ensure that the system is running smoothly; it also alerts him to issues such as mailboxes exceeding their allotted storage capacity and recommends ways to fix them.

And because Exchange Server integrates with Windows Mobile, SIC avoided deploying a second e-mail server solely for mobile access. “If we deployed other mobile access services, as some of our users wanted, we would have had to install another server. With Windows Mobile, we are using the same server,” says Quezada. “Now everyone has the same interface no matter whether they are using their smartphone or their workstation.

Single Point of Contact for Technical Support

Quezada de Almeida finds that having one vendor simplifies his technical support requirements. ”If we had gone with Cisco, we would have had extra management overhead. We would have needed to deal with another vendor and another integration partner. Working only with Microsoft is a big plus because I like to be able to call just one person to solve problems.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Sociedade Independente de Comunicação products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.sic.pt

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to:
www.microsoft.com/exchange

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published July 2007