A Leading Global Entertainment Content Company, Viacom Reaches More Than 508 Million Households

Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study

Standardized Portal Solution Increases Collaboration and Efficiency for Media Giant

Overview “We’re first and foremost a content company, and Country or Region: United States Office SharePoint Server is helping us to support Industry: Media and entertainment the move to a digital environment.” Customer Profile Joe Simon, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, MTV Networks MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, is a global entertainment content company with brands such as MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, COMEDY As an entertainment company, MTV Networks must ensure the CENTRAL, and TV Land. MTV Networks has 10,000 employees and is based in free flow of ideas and content. However, the company’s New York City. previous portal infrastructure wasn’t helping much, as end users

Business Situation could not publish their own content. MTV Networks standardized

The company’s previous portal on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, upon which the infrastructure required IT involvement to publish new content and required an company deployed a new intranet portal, a Viacom corporate excessive amount of attention from IT portal, and multiple Internet sites. Self-service content publishing personnel. enables groups across the company to communicate better, Solution while rich collaboration and search features are helping global MTV Networks standardized on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server employees to easily find and share information. With Office 2007, which today hosts intranets for SharePoint Server, MTV Networks is benefitting from a MTV Networks and Viacom, in addition to multiple Internet sites. standardized portal platform that delivers new capabilities in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective manner, and will serve the Benefits  Improved communication and company well into the future. collaboration  Increased IT efficiency  Extensible environment “Today we can Situation having a single group trying to keep people A leading global entertainment content across the division in touch with each other collaborate globally not company, Viacom reaches more than 508 wasn’t working. Content on the portal had only on the sharing of million households in 161 countries and degraded to the point that much of it was territories around the world through several years old, with the most popular content, but also on television programs, motion pictures, and destination being the cafeteria menu.” how that content is digital media. MTV Networks, Viacom’s largest division, includes household brands Because of the portal’s limitations, many created.” such as MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at groups deployed their own portal solutions. Joe Simon, Senior Vice President and Chief Nite, COMEDY CENTRAL, and TV Land. “We had portals from several different Information Officer, MTV Networks vendors, as well as some that were MTV Networks must ensure the free flow of homegrown,” says Brian Amirian, Vice ideas and content to remain competitive as President of Server and Storage an entertainment company. “In our Technologies at MTV Networks. “That led business, success is all about creativity— to issues with backup, recovery, and about coming up with the next big idea,” scalability, with too much time being spent says Dave Mitchell, Vice President of on maintenance and support. We needed a Application Development at MTV Networks. single portal solution that could support the “To stay in touch with our audiences, we entire division.” need to constantly reinvent ourselves, which means taking peoples’ ideas and Solution making them part of a greater knowledge MTV Networks chose to standardize on pool.” Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, upon which the division deployed its new In 2002, to improve communication and intranet portal. Self-service content collaboration, MTV Networks deployed a publishing and rich collaboration tools are corporate intranet portal based on Plumtree improving communication and making end Software. Within a few years, however, the users more productive, while a single division’s needs had grown to the point that underlying infrastructure is improving IT the portal was inadequate. “Our first- efficiency and minimizing costs. generation portal was great for divisionwide communication,” says Mitchell. “However, “Everyone had the same vision for a new as times have changed, so have our portal platform,” says Mitchell, ”in that we needs, in that people today need to be able wanted a solution where all the pieces fit to communicate and collaborate directly together and within which people could with each other in a digital medium. It’s not easily work, with the responsibility for always easy to put some folks in a room, content management pushed to end users. have a conversation, and get something We considered a portal solution from a done, especially when someone is in different vendor, but it still would have France and someone else is in Singapore.” needed to be centrally controlled. Another deciding factor was that we’ve always been One problem was the difficulty in publishing a heavy user of Microsoft software, and new content. “Only IT personnel could Office SharePoint Server 2007 offered the publish new content,” says Mitchell, “and “Office SharePoint ability to integrate seamlessly with the rest have to have confidence that what they’re of our IT infrastructure.” sharing can only be accessed by the Server 2007 offered proper people. Other products might have the ability to integrate MTV Networks is hosting several sites on let us, as an IT organization, control who the same instance of Office SharePoint can access what, but Office SharePoint seamlessly with the Server 2007: Server enabled us to turn that control over rest of our IT to business users and thus step completely  MTV Networks intranet, which was out of a day-to-day operational role.” infrastructure.” deployed in June 2007 and currently Dave Mitchell, Vice President of Application supports all 5,000 of the division’s The division’s new intranet portal hosts Development, MTV Networks domestic employees. more than 110 sites for various groups, all of which are empowered to manage their  Viacom corporate intranet, which own content, as are business owners of the was deployed a few months later, is used Viacom corporate intranet and Internet by some 200 employees in the Viacom sites. “Each site typically has two to three corporate organization. administrators within the business group who are responsible for administration and  Internet sites, such Viacom.com and content publishing,” says Mitchell. “They TVLandPress.com, which support know their own content, and when they communication with external groups need to publish something, can make it such investors, analysts, and the press. happen fast. An added benefit of using Office SharePoint Server for both intranet The entire Office SharePoint Server and Internet sites is that business groups infrastructure is hosted on only eight server who own one of each type of site can apply computers, which run the Windows Server® the same content management skills 2003 operating system. Content is stored across both.” on a database server cluster running Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database Easy Collaboration and Access to software. Information MTV Networks also needed to provide a Self-Service Content Management single place where employees could share In selecting a portal solution, self-service and find information. “Outside of content content management and publishing were publishing, end-user requirements were high on the list of requirements. “We both grand and small,” says Mitchell. needed to push responsibility for content “There was the need to bring people ownership out to business customers, who together across the globe, allowing them to prefer to manage their own content,” says collaborate and share great ideas without Mitchell. “With Office SharePoint Server being limited by geographic or 2007, they can publish content using an organizational boundaries. Today, whether edit-in-place environment, with built-in someone is in marketing or sales or workflows for content approval, and can research, they can go to collaboration sites control who has access to that content. The that enable them to share information and security features of Office SharePoint work together in a broad range of ways, Server were huge for us because people including document and meeting “Standardizing on workspaces, wikis, blogs, and more. We expanding the reach of its new intranet to have more than 150 such sites today, and include its 5,000 international employees. Office SharePoint that number is growing faster than ever.” Mitchell’s team also is using Office Server has provided SharePoint Server 2007 as part of a new When MTV Networks asked itself which solution that will automate the process of better economies of collaboration features people needed, part provisioning new employees. “The E- scale. Not only are of the answer came from the rapidly Provisioning application will use Office growing number of Windows® SharePoint SharePoint Server together with several there fewer servers to Services sites, of which there were about other applications to orchestrate interaction manage, but they can 60 at the time. However, these were with back-end systems for space planning, standalone sites that had grown bottom-up, telecommunications, and security,” says all be supported in the with no organization or structure, and with Mitchell. “We expect to reduce the time and same way, making so many new requests that it was effort required to process a new employee overwhelming for the IT team. “One group by at least 80 percent.” backup and recovery a would get a SharePoint site, another group lot simpler.” would see it, and they would want one too,” Benefits says Janni Plattner, a Business Analyst in Standardization on Office SharePoint Brian Amirian, Vice President of Server and Mitchell’s group. “Our move to Office Server 2007 as a divisionwide portal Storage Technologies, MTV Networks SharePoint Server 2007 provided an platform has yielded benefits for end users opportunity to take a top-down, and the division’s IT staff. Self-service enterprisewide approach to meeting user content publishing enables groups across demand for new collaboration sites, which, the division to communicate more thanks to a collection of fast, easy wins, efficiently, while rich collaboration tools and was quickly growing.” comprehensive search features are enabling people to more easily find and Another key factor in the division’s decision share information. By building the new to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 was portal infrastructure on Office SharePoint its Enterprise Search capabilities. “We Server 2007, MTV Networks is delivering needed to go beyond content management those capabilities in a reliable, scalable, and collaboration to incorporate knowledge and cost-effective manner, and it has management,” says Plattner. “The implemented a technology environment Enterprise Search feature in Office and toolkit that will serve the division well SharePoint Server allows people to have into the future. one location to search for files, people, Web site content, and more. By having a “We’re first and foremost a content single search tool that spans all those company, and Office SharePoint Server is areas, we can reduce duplication of effort helping us to support the move to a digital and accelerate the adoption of best environment,” says Joe Simon, Senior Vice practices across the division.” President and Chief Information Officer at MTV Networks. “Today we can collaborate Future Efforts globally not only on the sharing of content, With the portal environment based on but also on how that content is created. By Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployed, working in this manner, both time-to-market MTV Networks is now focused on and costs are reduced, which means we “… We’ve got some can produce more content for the same several hundred people, which is saving a amount of dollars. And in our business, the lot of money,” says Ward. “And the same early wins under our more content we can produce, the greater capabilities save time. Instead of belt and the IT our chances of creating a hit.” photocopying press releases, ordering transfers of videos, making copies of organization is being Improved Communication and Collaboration photos, and sending out those materials, seen as a strong Groups are taking advantage of self- we can focus on building stronger service content publishing to communicate relationships with the reporters, talent provider of new more effectively with both internal and brokers, and radio hosts who are our business value.” external users. One example of this is constituents.” Viacom.com, which is used primarily to Dave Mitchell, Vice President of Application communicate with investors and analysts. Collaboration sites also have made Development, MTV Networks “Prior to Office SharePoint Server, employees more productive, enabling them Viacom.com was stagnant,” says Kristin to easily share information. One group Heitmann, Manager of Corporate benefiting from that capability is the Communications for Viacom. “Self-service Content Distribution and Marketing group, content publishing enables us to post more which, as Mitchell puts it, “has taken the information and keep it current, making the out-of-the-box collaboration features process as easy as editing a Microsoft provided by Office SharePoint Server and Office Word document. Those capabilities run with them.” Another big fan of those have been especially useful at the end of collaboration tools is Jacques Tortoroli, the quarter, when we need to publish Executive Vice President and Chief updated financials.” Financial Officer for MTV Networks, who maintains his own blog on the portal. Another group enjoying similar benefits is the Communications team for TV Land, Increased IT Efficiency which now uses an Internet site based on Standardization on Office SharePoint Office SharePoint Server 2007 to publish Server 2007 has improved efficiency for content for the press. “When working with Mitchell’s group, especially as the the media, you need to be able to responsibility for content publishing has accommodate them almost been offloaded to business users. “One of instantaneously,” says Paul Ward, who was the magical things about Office SharePoint Senior Vice President of Communications Server is that I’m able to support a global for TV Land. “Thanks to the flexibility and intranet portal with only four to five people,” effectiveness of the SharePoint technology, says Mitchell. “In cases where some level and the efforts of our IT department, of customization is required, I can send that TVLandPress.com has become a useful work offshore, keeping my own team free and efficient destination. Media to press forward with the development of professionals love the convenience that it new features that can be reused across all offers.” sites. We can turn around 10 new sites a month in this way—often at such a low cost The new site also has improved that I don’t even need to charge it back to a productivity and reduced costs. “We no business group. And after that new site is longer need to physically send materials to For More Information live, its day-to-day management is handled Microsoft Office System For more information about Microsoft by the site’s own business users.” The Microsoft Office system is the business products and services, call the Microsoft world’s chosen environment for information Sales Information Center at (800) 426- A consolidated solution also is improving work, providing the programs, servers, and 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft efficiency for Amirian’s Server and Storage services that help you succeed by Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- Technologies group, which runs the data transforming information into impact. 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- center where Office SharePoint Server of-hearing can reach Microsoft text 2007 is hosted. “Standardizing on Office For more information about the Microsoft telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) SharePoint Server has provided better Office system, go to: 892-5234 in the United States or (905) economies of scale,” Amirian says. “Not www.microsoft.com/office 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 only are there fewer servers to manage, United States and Canada, please but they can all be supported in the same contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. way, making backup and recovery a lot To access information using the World simpler. Office SharePoint Server has fit Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com very well into our existing IT infrastructure and integrates with the other Microsoft For more information about MTV technologies that we already have in place. Networks, visit the Web site at: It’s valuable to me because I can support it www.viacom.com/ourbrands/medianetwo with existing resources and skill sets, rks/mtvnetworks/Pages/default.aspx leveraging economies of scale to keep ongoing costs to a minimum.”

Extensible Environment Although the solution is already delivering strong benefits, Mitchell says that the best is still yet to come. “We now have a portal platform that can grow with us as a company,” he says. ”Thanks to strong partnerships with the business, we’ve got some early wins under our belt and the IT organization is being seen as a strong provider of new business value. The fact that business users are coming to us on their own and saying ‘Can we do this with SharePoint?’ is clearly an indicator of success. We’re supporting a process. We’re not becoming the process.”

Software and Services  Microsoft Server Product Portfolio  2007 Microsoft Office System − Windows Server 2003 − Microsoft Office SharePoint Server − Microsoft SQL Server 2005 2007

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Document published April 2008