Sky selects IBM Aspera for high-speed delivery of news and programming

ARMONK, N.Y. - 01 Sep 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Sky, Europe’s leading entertainment company, has deployed IBM Aspera solutions to help speed up the ingest retrieval and delivery of news, programming and other content internally and with external suppliers across Europe and around the world.

Sky’s need for a new transfer solution became apparent following the recent acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, which opened the door to sharing a host of new, valuable content between the organizations. Additionally, Sky’s move away from magnetic tape-based workflows accelerated the need for a more efficient file-based solution that is reliable, secure and fast to acquire content from suppliers and share materials internally.

Sky Production Services (SPS), the company’s content production department, ultimately selected a suite of high-speed file transfer solutions from Aspera.

Aspera’s advanced security capabilities were a main factor in Sky’s selection, with features including Aspera Proxy deployed in a highly available active/active configuration, encryption in transit and at rest and user authentication to protect valuable content, such as pre-air premium content, throughout the transfer process.

By facilitating collaboration with European counterparts and third party content suppliers, Aspera enables Sky to provide the broadest range of high quality content to their 22 million customers across Italy, Germany, Austria, Ireland and the UK.

Aspera Point-to-Point clients housed at each supplier’s location enable content providers to deliver content directly to Sky’s media asset management platform – eliminating the need for third party aggregators – while Aspera faspex, with the Aspera Cargo automatic download client, is used for pushed delivery domestically and globally.

Aiming to remain at the forefront of new technology advancements that enhance the viewing experience for their customers, Sky is also adopting Aspera On Demand for high-speed, security-rich transfer of digital content directly to its cloud-based transcoding platform, and is collaborating with Aspera on new initiatives to innovate new stream-based delivery and distribution workflows.

“We have 100% confidence in the Aspera system and the support we are provided,” said Darren Long Director of SPS at Sky. “Aspera has enabled us to receive and deliver broadcast files in a secure, fast, reliable and automated fashion and has enabled SPS to become more flexible and link up closely and collaboratively with our European peers. Aspera is also collaborating with us to develop innovative solutions that meet the evolving media transport needs of our business, at the cutting edge of the industry.”

“As Europe’s leading media company Sky is continually growing and changing both through mergers, as well as through its adoption of technological advances,” said Bruce Brewer, European sales director at Aspera. “With IBM Aspera, they get a flexible and reliable transfer solution that can provide immediate high performance and still enables them to adapt to the rapidly changing broadcast environments of the future.”

Aspera is demonstrating its entire portfolio of high-speed transfer products for content delivery, sharing and exchange at IBC2016 from September 9-13 in Amsterdam, Hall 7, Stand G20.

About Sky

Sky is Europe’s leading entertainment company. The group serves 22 million customers across five countries: Italy, Germany, Austria, the UK and Ireland. We offer the best and broadest range of content, deliver market-leading customer service and use innovative new technology to give customers a better TV experience, whenever and wherever they choose.

About Aspera

Aspera’s unwavering mission is to create the next-generation software technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions.