The relationship leverages the leading edge industry expertise in the BBC’s new commercial subsidiary BBC Technology with Sun’s established position in Enterprise, IP and Service Provider solutions.
The joint solution will allow media and entertainment companies – including broadcasters, broadband portals and 3G wireless operators – to differentiate themselves by unlocking the potential of their content to provide high bandwidth IP based services like video streaming, video on demand and MP3 downloads.
This announcement highlights Sun as an important provider for the media and entertainment markets, said Philip Langsdale, CEO of BBC Technology, Inc. Sun’s systems will give our joint customers the industry-leading scalability and functionality they require. Together, we will help companies realize new revenue streams by unlocking the potential of their media content.
The BBC is known worldwide for its pioneering work with Digital Broadcast, High Volume Media Streaming and Interactive Television. BBC Technology,launching as a commercial subsidiary of the BBC, has been formed to deliver solutions in these areas. Both companies seek to leverage their core skills in media solutions tailored for broadcasters, traditional media companies, internet portals, IP service providers and 3rd Generation Wireless operators.
Together, our two companies will help customers in the IP services business define a digital media strategy which encompases content creation, acquisition, storage and rights management, said Stephen McKenna, director for Media and Entertainment Industry sales, Sun Microsystems. Our relationship will meet the growing demands for digital media solutions that collaborate to the roll-out of broadband networks through cable modems, ADSL and 3G Wireless networks.
The companies have previously worked together on the BBC’s own websites http://www.bbc.co.uk and http://www.bbc.com/. The sites were designed and built by BBC Technology people and together they support the world’s largest quantity of streamed rich media content. BBC Online currently supports over 12 million media streams per month. Since its inception, the site has not gone down.
Sun and BBC Technology are ideally suited to work together with BBC supplying innovative media products on Sun’s industry standard platform. The first customer projects as a result of the relationship are already underway in Europe and North America.
BBC and Sun have worked together for a number of years with BBC being an early provider of interactive TV applications using the Java TV(tm) standard. The two companies are presently working on projects in media distribution and remote education.
