Corus Prepares for the Future of Entertainment Software-Defined Networking from IBM and Cisco Enables Service Innovation

Case Study Industry: Media & Entertainment Solution: Services Geography: Ontario, Canada

Corus prepares for the future of entertainment Software-defined networking from IBM and Cisco enables service innovation

Building on its strategic alliance with Cisco, IBM® Global Technology Services® helped Corus Entertainment (external link) move to a performant, scalable and highly available network architecture that will support the ongoing evolution of its digital services for the next decade.

“IBM will certainly be a preferred partner for future networking engagements.” - Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network Operations, Corus Entertainment Case Study: Corus Entertainment

By replacing its legacy networking environment with next-generation Cisco Catalyst 9300 and Cisco Nexus® 9300-EX Series Switches (external links), Corus Entertainment has Switching on created a future-ready platform for service new services innovation in the years ahead. Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network Operations Business Impact at Corus Entertainment, explains, “Our • Boosts network backbone corporate network supports many bandwidth from 40 Gbit to mission-critical services, so maintaining 100 Gbit, creating headroom high levels of availability is a top priority. At for future data growth. the same time, we see that digital tools will play a crucial role in the development of new • Cuts network latency from products and services for customers, and we 15 ms to 9 ms, a reduction aim to ensure that the corporate network is of 40 percent that facilitates never a roadblock to innovation.” the deployment of real-time digital services. She continues, “By working with IBM and Cisco to move to a brand-new • Enhances network availability network—powered by the open, by 32 percent, helping to extensible, and software-driven ensure 24/7 uptime for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure mission-critical services. [ACI, external link]—we’ve already more than doubled our bandwidth, slashed latency • Achieved a zero-disruption by 40 percent and lifted availability by migration to the new network 32 percent. These capabilities give us the infrastructure, minimizing confidence that we can be a more effective impact on business users. partner to the business, and spin up new infrastructure rapidly to enable future • Enables automated service innovation.” provisioning and monitoring services, predicted to help boost operational efficiency and cut time-to-market for new services.

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Changing the channel “We’ve been delighted with the help we received from Corus Entertainment has relied on Cisco “Whatever the future holds, our objective solutions to support its networking is to ensure we can respond with agility IBM Global Technology requirements for many years. to the needs of the business—without Services during the compromising on the availability of migration, as well as the With the company’s existing Cisco switches existing services, or sending operational ongoing assistance we now approaching end-of-life, Corus saw an costs soaring.” enjoy from IBM Technology opportunity to enhance its services at Support Services.” the corporate data center. The aim was In its compute environment, Corus to ensure that the new network could harnesses virtual servers powered -Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network accommodate anticipated growth in by VMware vSphere. Corus saw that Operations, Corus Entertainment the volume and velocity of data, and extending the efficiencies of virtualization scale rapidly in line with emerging to the network environment would help business requirements. it to achieve its goals, and looked for a solution that offered the latest advances in “Two key networking capabilities we software-defined networking (SDN). targeted were ease of deployment and scalability,” confirms Shweta Bajaj. “Although we don’t know exactly what the future requirements for digital services will be, the disruptive impact of digital media in the last decade shows us that change is almost inevitable.

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Selecting the right partners

To help reduce the business risk on She adds, “Another important factor in About Corus its journey to the new networking selecting IBM was their strategic alliance infrastructure, Corus Entertainment with Cisco. As well as having deep engaged IBM and Cisco to provide expert expertise in Cisco networking solutions, Corus Entertainment Inc. Studios, a globally recognized consulting, integration, and support the IBM team presented side-by-side with (TSX: CJR.B, external link) is producer of hit scripted and services. The company engaged IBM Global their counterparts from Cisco during the a leading media and content unscripted content. The company Technology Services to assist with the selection process, which went a long way to company that develops and also owns innovative full-service consulting, design and implementation demonstrating the close contacts between delivers high quality brands and social digital agency so.da, of the data center migration project, and the two organizations.” content across platforms for lifestyle entertainment company IBM Technology Support Services to deliver audiences around the world. Kin Canada, leading 2D animation ongoing support and maintenance. Engaging audiences since 1999, software supplier Toon Boom and the company’s portfolio of children’s book publishing house, “Before we embarked on this project, we multimedia offerings encompass Kids Can Press. Corus’ roster of scored a number of leading IT vendors 33 specialty television services, premium brands includes Global across several delivery areas,” comments 39 radio stations, 15 conventional Television, W Network, HGTV Shweta Bajaj. “The offering from IBM Global television stations, a suite of Canada, Food Network Canada, Technology Services really stood out. Not digital and streaming assets, HISTORY®, Showcase, Adult Swim, only did IBM bring a clear vision for the animation software, technology National Geographic, Disney new networking architecture, they also and media services. Channel Canada, YTV, Global presented a compelling roadmap for the News, Globalnews.ca, Q107, implementation and beyond. IBM is truly a Corus is an internationally Country 105, and CFOX, along one-stop shop to serve our needs, and their renowned content creator and with broadly distributed Canadian consultants gave us great confidence that distributor through Nelvana, a streaming platforms STACKTV, IBM had the skills and experience to make world class animation studio Nick+, the Global TV App and our project a success.” expert in all formats and Corus Curiouscast.

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By moving to Cisco switches with native support for Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA, external link) and Cisco Unlocking the ACI, Corus Entertainment aims to harness machine-learning-driven automation to benefits of reduce the time and manual effort required to manage, monitor, and scale its network. “Because of the close automation strategic alliance between “Although we’ve not yet had an opportunity to IBM and Cisco, there was put the automated provisioning capabilities never a need for us to go of Cisco ACI to the test, we’ve already been back and forth between impressed by how much easier the solution them to validate our makes it to understand the status and overall high-level architecture health of our network,” says Shweta Bajaj. designs or hardware

“To date, we’ve only used Cisco DNA on configurations.” a small scale, by pushing out Cisco IOS® upgrades to our switches from a single point -Shweta Bajaj, Manager, Network of control. Looking to the future, we believe Operations, Corus Entertainment that Cisco DNA will make a big difference to the way we provision new infrastructure. For example, if a new use case from the business requires us to stand up a significant amount of networking equipment, Cisco DNA will help us avoid time-consuming manual configuration processes—saving time, and helping our networking team stay lean and agile.”

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First, Corus Entertainment worked with Cisco to assess its existing networking infrastructure and map out the optimal Future-proofing upgrade path. Following this engagement, Corus decided to deploy Cisco Catalyst 9300 the network and Cisco Nexus 9300-EX Series Switches, with Cisco DNA to accelerate and simplify Solution management, and Cisco ACI to facilitate components network automation. • Cisco Nexus® 9300-EX Series “Because our switches were approaching Switches (external link) end-of-support, we set aggressive deadlines • IBM® Global Technology for the project,” explains Shweta Bajaj. Services® “A zero-disruption switchover to the new network was absolutely vital. As well as • IBM Technology Support essential communications technologies Services such as telephony, voice-over-IP, and Microsoft Exchange email servers, our corporate network also delivers services for our broadcast teams, such as our broadcast scheduling and archiving systems. If any of these systems went offline unexpectedly, the business impact would be enormous—and we simply couldn’t afford unplanned downtime.”

She continues, “Working together with IBM and Cisco, we painstakingly tested the new network infrastructure and performed a gradual, phased deployment. Thanks to our diligent approach to testing and timely support and guidance from the IBM and Cisco teams, we successfully made the transition to our next-generation network infrastructure with zero impact on business operations.”

6 Take the next step

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