Bloomberg

Challenge

Bloomberg is the leading provider of financial software tools including a trading platform, analytics, data services, and news to financial companies and organizations worldwide. Bloomberg has a global television network, a radio station, and multiple websites with more than 20 million monthly visitors. The Bloomberg app and website provide a global VOD news service as well as live video content.

Bloomberg’s live and VOD video architecture utilizes both in-house and external video services. Previously, Bloomberg relied heavily on their OVP for a majority of the video architecture components. This legacy architecture was not cost effective and limited Bloomberg’s ability to rapidly deploy features and enable high-quality video simultaneously. Bloomberg prefers to bring their CMS and other video services in-house and ensure quality video delivery while expanding their current features.

Solution

Initially, Conviva delivered a discovery gap analysis and provided an end-to-end solution recommendation to provide the ideal solution for Bloomberg. Conviva’s Expert Services team collaborated in building out its Content Management System, In-House Transcoding, Encoding, Origin Storage, CDN, Protocol and Player. Additionally, to support the partnership, Conviva created customized API’s to power in-house dashboards, supporting the video team from editorial, to ad sales, to research.

Result

As an early adopter in online video, Bloomberg built a deep digital presence. Conviva’s Expert Services Team and real-time analytics were able to drive efficiencies. The team designed an architecture that gave Bloomberg full control of functionality, feature velocity and cost, reducing dependency with any single vendor.

• Enabled Bloomberg to scale its business by volume of VOD content, number of live channels, number of apps, and number of platforms without changing fundamentals of the architecture

• Reduced bitrate profiles from 23 to 14, enabling Bloomberg to deliver quality video at top efficiency

• Powered Bloomberg’s in-house dashboards with real-time data, allowing the entire video team to make smart decisions and improve engagement quickly

• Enabled quality live events, including the 2012 GOP debates, by ensuring no issues in the live feed and viewers are able to consume video in real-time.

"Bloomberg is investing deeply in online video to provide viewers with up to date and up to the minute global news. Conviva enables us to deliver video effectively every day.” 
-- Eric Steinle, Head of Product & Design for Web Products