Bbc Digital
BBC’s digital media fiasco – would the cloud have been a safer bet?
On the surface, the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative sounded so simple. The plan was to create a digital archive for raw media footage – audio and video – so that it could be accessed directly from the desktops of editors and production staff. This could save up to 2.5% of production costs, suggested the original plan, saving millions of pounds per year in principle.
In practice, the “ambitious” project got out of control. It was originally outsourced to Siemens in 2008 but was brought back in house in 2010. Two years later, in October 2012 the BBC Trust halted the project and kicked off an internal review. And last week, the corporation’s Director General, Tony Hall announced he had canned the whole thing. (LINK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22651126)
In the event, the project cost £98.4 million over the period 2010 – 2012. The Telegraph’s William Foxton suggests that the previous costs with Siemens ran at around £150 million. (LINK: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/willardfoxton2/100009142/we-may-never-know-the-true-cost-of-the-bbcs-latest-disaster-but-itll-be-a-lot-more-than-100-million/) While a proportion of that money may have been clawed back, even the way this was done looks grubby in that it was partly funded by ‘efficiency savings’. (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubacc/808/80805.htm)
An external inquiry has been launched (which involves spending money on PWC) as well as another inquiry – costing even more money – planned by the Public Accounts Committee. John Linwood, the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer, has been suspended on full pay.
In all, the whole situation has been a calamity, a tragedy and a fantastic waste of taxpayers’ money. At this juncture it would be far, far too trite to ask whether things would be different if the Beeb could have benefited from Cloud Computing, wouldn’t it? Surely an unfair question, given that five years ago cloud models were still in their relative infancy?
While big-budget IT projects may still have been the default course in 2008, by the time the project first hit the ropes in 2010 the potential of the cloud was much clearer. Elastic, scalable resources, pay only for what you need, accessible anywhere, the core features of cloud would seem to be tailor-made for the needs of broadcast media management.
The cloud model does work for broadcasting – as NBC found last year, when it streamed 70 live feeds of Olympic footage for direct editing by staff based in New York. Netflix has built a global business on it. Meanwhile, at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, the Beeb was forced to transfer videotapes by hand using that well-known high speed network – the London Underground.
We could give the BBC the benefit of the doubt and suggest that the cloud might not have been a valid choice for the BBC’s videotape archiving and access needs back in 2010. However, according to a National Audit Office report however, “Although it took the Program technology development in-house, the BBC did not test whether that was the best option.” In other words, nobody bothered to look.
In purely common sense terms this move was particularly dumb. To expect a technology specification to still be valid two years after it was conceived suggests a shocking failure of judgement. To consider its validity extending a further two to three years into the future, particularly given the amount of change going on at the time, beggars belief.
We are where we are, however. Of course – as has been written about extensively – cloud computing isn’t some magic bullet. In the broadcast scenario it would appear to hold many advantages over in-house systems, however. Not least that its elastic nature would allow for piloting of a new platform before broader roll-out. Even if it had failed, it would have done so at a much smaller cost.
Indeed, even if the project had bet on the cloud and still failed as spectacularly, it wouldn’t have to deal with the fact it has been left with a pile of near-useless hardware and software. The millions of license fee payers who have seen their annual fees thrown into the abyss might hope that the now-redundant technology might have some value on eBay. According to the BBC Trust’s Anthony Fry, it is good for little else. (LINK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2013/dmi_letter.html)
Will the BBC at least consider the cloud as an option going forward? This is not yet clear. James Purnell, BBC’s newly-appointed director of strategy and digital has stated that, “In the future we are going to rely far more on off-the-shelf technology.” Which is a start.
Bandwidth may be considered the main obstacle, suggested the Beeb’s Chief Enterprise Architect, Harry Strover in November last year. “One file could take up to a couple of days to move into the Cloud,” he commented. This shouldn’t really be the sticking point – with today’s network architectures, the same bandwidth is available to both cross-site and Internet connections, at much the same cost.
Over the past few years, we have seen much written about the potential for cloud failure – no technology approach is perfect. But even while we are doing so it is worth sparing a thought for the alternative. As illustrated once again in very stark terms, the notion that building an in-house system is in any way less risky should be quite firmly put to bed.