Channel 4 looks to Delphix to accelerate innovation

As a major public service broadcaster, Channel 4 delivers a high volume of programming and commercial content to millions of viewers every day. Behind the scenes, its operation is powered by a broadcast management system, and an advertising sales system. Both experience regular and complex updates to maintain market advantage, meaning the timely and accurate distribution of data to its development and test environments is critical and underpins the successful operation of the business.

The broadcaster already used Agile and DevOps models to accelerate delivery of business change, but a lack of automation tools in optimising data management caused delays to environment deployment and drove significant costs in storage and tooling. The time taken to refresh the circa 18TB of data in test environments was inhibiting system and business agility, and ultimately preventing teams from realising its goal of regular change and deployment.

Channel 4 also relies heavily on a suite of data warehouses to provide accurate and up-to-date insights into business performance and future opportunities. The ability to rapidly refresh this information and manage volume sizes is key to their ongoing success, and helps target spend on screen instead of on technology.

To tackle this, Channel 4 began working with Delphix as part of a DataOps approach to optimise and automate its application development process. Through the use of the Delphix Dynamic Data Platform, changes and modifications to key systems are more efficiently managed and the availability of reporting data is improved.

Delphix has allowed the broadcaster to accelerate data delivery for development, testing and reporting, enabling faster innovation and improving operational efficiency. Using Delphix Data Pods, Channel 4 has developed a way to connect database administrators to developers to ensure fresh and secure delivery of data. What used to take days now takes just minutes, enabling Channel 4 to release applications quickly and with confidence.

“The success of our business depends on the immediate availability of high-quality data. Delphix has driven faster innovation and improved our delivery of key business systems and timely business insights,” said James Curran, programme manager, Channel 4.

“This is yet another great example of how DataOps is helping companies do more with their data. Channel 4 has applied Delphix to its most complex applications and is reaping benefits in agility, governance and cost,” said Iain Chidgey, General Manager EMEA, Delphix.