Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 18, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
PLAZAMEDIA, Germany’s leading full-service provider of sports and media productions, has commissioned Blue Order, Europe’s leading provider of media asset-management solutions, to build and continually develop a multi-user platform for the digital archiving and distribution of productions.
Initially, the temporal availability and process efficiency of productions are to be improved by implementing Blue Order’s “Media Archive 3.2” as an interface between production islands currently used independently of one another. At the end of the project, PLAZAMEDIA is to have a fully integrated, cross-departmental file workflow. In particular, the sports producer will integrate the highly flexible and fast processes of live sports production into a consistent, machine-readable technical platform. PLAZAMEDIA is Europe’s leading production service provider for major live sports events. In addition to the multilateral Bundesliga production for PREMIERE, PLAZAMEDIA regularly provides host broadcasting for international sports events, including the current European Hockey Championship and the Women’s Handball World Championship, and served as a supporting provider at the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™.
“In connection with the comprehensive digitization and networking of media management, archive, post-production and playout, we will further optimize our workflows and the flexibility with which we handle live material at sports events. Our customers in particular will benefit, as we can now offer even faster and more flexible availability of production material,” said Chris Wieland, Head of Technology at PLAZAMEDIA. The Munich company chose Blue Order as its provider because it was convinced by the company’s functions and the universal applicability of its systems.
In future, PLAZAMEDIA will manage all processes with Media Archive: metadata management from capture to delivery to individual distribution channels, as well as high- and low-resolution video files. Media Archive will also serve as the core platform for operating various third-party systems in the video-production chain. Thanks to its workflow-driven, service-oriented architecture based on Microsoft’s .NET Framework, Media Archive provides all functions as web services through SOAP interfaces. This approach greatly simplifies the configuration of seamless cross-system processes and makes the overall system inherently scalable and fault-tolerant.
Ulf Genzel, Chief Sales Officer of Blue Order Solutions AG: “We are pleased about this installation at PLAZAMEDIA and especially that PLAZAMEDIA regards this project as the beginning of a long-term strategic partnership.”
The first phase of the joint project, the introduction of Media Archive as a central workflow-management system, will be completed in spring 2008.
Further project phases to expand Media Archive’s functional scope with workflow and media asset management, and with the allocation of production-related workflows and business processes, are already planned.
