State Academic Mariinsky Theatre takes away web broadcastings in "cloud"

On March 23, 2015 it became known of an implementation project of "cloud" technologies from IBM in IT structure of the Maryinsky Theater^[1].

Project Tasks

Since 1999 the theater conducts Internet broadcastings, trying to attract audience. Work on this project began in 1999. In those days the majority used dial-up connection, speed was small, viewing broadcastings was complicated.

In 2009 at the Maryinsky Theater managed to implement automatic fine tuning of quality of broadcasting to opportunities of the consumer equipment.

Building of the Maryinsky Theater, 2013

"We stopped on Microsoft Silverlight technology, created the heavy web application, then optimized it. But broadcastings at us are different, sometimes it is very large-scale actions, such as discovery of the new price, ballet festivals, performances of summary children's choir... Thousands of people come to them. At the same time, we try to popularize ancient and modern music — interest in such broadcastings less large-scale. We have a "low" season when we carry out four broadcastings a month. And happens — as now during the ballet festival — and eight, and ten broadcastings monthly", - Evgeny Barbashin, the head of information technology of the Maryinsky Theater explained.

Afterwards the theater used IBM Cloud for broadcastings in network. Before implementation of a cloud solution own server was used.

Project Progress

Considering requirements to infrastructure, IT department of the Maryinsky Theater made the decision on use of cloud services: are tried by Amazon Elastic Cloud, Microsoft Azure.

The remote location of DPCs of these clouds was unacceptable for theater as about 80% of the audience of broadcasts of the Maryinsky Theater are in Russia.

The department learned about the solution IBM Softlayer and became interested - the theater did not need the place for placement of file archive, but transmission rate is of great importance. In Softlayer there is a possibility of consolidation of physical and virtual servers within one contract and the interface. after decision-making, the customer received the server in several hours.

Project Results

Due to use of the solution IBM Softlayer of costs for Internet broadcastings at the Maryinsky Theater decreased more than twice.

As of March 24, 2015 IT department of theater is engaged in resource transfer from the servers placed with provider on DPC in a cloud.

"We did not close the DPC yet because in Russia there is no DPC of Softlayer though personal data of the audience at us are not stored. In principle, even the total failure from own DPC in the future for us is possible", - Evgeny Barbashin emphasized.

Notes