Media network of the Maryinsky Theater: SCS, video surveillance, DPC, TV broadcasting and ACS

At the beginning of September in St. Petersburg the protocol on successful conducting tests and end of the first stage of an implementation project of IP infrastructure of Cisco in the building of the second scene under construction of the Maryinsky Theater was signed.

Construction of a new stage of theater began in 2003. Building area is nearly 80 thousand square meters. According to a request of the customer of one of the largest in terms of the scope of of works of a construction object in the territory of the historic center of St. Petersburg, designers initially were guided by the most modern and checked solutions.

Objedinennye inzhenernye sistemy LLC, the system integrator specializing in creation of power supply systems, data transmissions and communications, and Cisco Systems LLC jointly build the modern, reliable and safe platform for receiving, transfer and storage of different information types – data, a voice and video. On the platform of the second stage of the Maryinsky Theater the full range of the different latest systems – the media network including wire and wireless structures of data transmission and also the system of security and theatrical video surveillance, a data processing center, the system of internal TV broadcasting, a control and management system for access is developed.

Usually these systems are separated that significantly complicates their subsequent integration and, as a result, increases the cost of their support and service. Modern technologies give the chance to eliminate this defect and it is essential to reduce costs both at a creation stage, and by stages of operation of a system. "As the new building is under construction not for a year and not for ten years, our task was to find such solution that the used information technologies as long as possible remained relevant and were very flexible, capable it is easy to adapt and adapt to constantly growing needs of theater and new projects which at us appear with enviable regularity, - the assistant department head of information technologies of the Maryinsky Theater Barbashin Evgeny explains. - Like the artist changing scenery on the stage, IT specialists in our theater will be able quickly to change structure of services and services, without changing a system basis. Our employees are interested in use of all range of opportunities of the IP telephony, at the same time we want to provide the maximum level of reliability of network. We welcome also new opportunities of the modern equipment, such as video calls, integration with the systems of instant messages and to that similar services. We are glad that we will be able to use all this soon".

The new unified system will have to correspond to ambitious tasks which were formulated by the state customer – Northwest Directorate on Construction, Reconstruction and Restoration Federal State Institution: construct theater of the future in the true sense of the word both in terms of architecture, and in engineering and information plans. According to the technical director of JSC CB of High-rise and Underground Constructions, the general designer of a new stage of the Maryinsky Theater Krzysztof Pomorski, "it is necessary to create the optimal unified information environment conforming to requirements of the XXI century both for employees of theater, and for the audience – real and virtual". According to Krzysztof, virtualization – one of the most important elements of development of modern theater. At creation of comfortable conditions for purchase of tickets via the Internet, an opportunity to select the place, previously having looked, how well from this place it is visible a scene, implementation of forward TV broadcasts of ballet performances in the digital 3D format, virtual excursions on theater and many other things are all this necessary conditions for involvement of the new audience. "Otherwise it is fully difficult to correspond to the concept "theatre of the future" and to remain relevant and modern", - K. Pomorski concludes.

The project of creation of single media network of the Maryinsky Theater is separated into two stages. The first phase – pilot – was implemented at the end of 2009. It included all components of the common decision in the minimum volumes and conducting in 2010 tests. The second phase is directly creation of information infrastructure of the second stage of theater. The technical director of Objedinennye inzhenernye sistemy LLC Avdokhin Vadim designates the pilot phase connected with deployment and setup of a core of a system and the main services, result of less noticeable, but not less important and rather long work on a system design: "At this stage the general concept of creation of network and also structure of the necessary equipment implementing basic functions of a system and a binding to a general architecture of theater was defined". It was followed by supply of equipment, being the center of a system, delivery of servers and switches and also the main software. In the project the solutions Cisco for networks of the enterprise, physical security and video surveillance, for digital signs and corporate television, the system of unified communications and also devices are applied to providing a continuous communication with users.

Tests were successfully complete at the beginning of September, 2010. At this stage the compatibility of all technology systems of theater was checked and compliance of the available technical capacities to assigned tasks is confirmed.

The second stage of the project will be performed in process of construction readiness of premises of the second scene. At the same time, if the emphasis was placed on the first stage on functional testing of systems and the choice of optimal technical solutions at setup of the equipment, then the second stage provides equipment of the building modern infrastructure. The media network is designed by the modular and hierarchical principle that gives the chance to break implementation into stages and to put into operation new fragments of network without breaks of communication and loss of functionality of already working infrastructure. Thus, the customer will receive the complete balanced complex which can always be added with new modules in operation. Project completion on creation of single media network of the second stage of the Maryinsky Theater is planned by the end of 2011.