Business models that were once stable are being heavily disrupted – and quickly – and the habits and expectations of consumers are entirely different to what they were ten, or even five years ago.

These commercial and consumer pressures have forced the media industry to embrace transformation, and do so rapidly. As the World Economic Forum noted, the sector is very much on the “vanguard” of digital transformation. Where once having the highest quality programming, best reporting, and highest value exclusive content was enough, in 2022 that is only the baseline, the WEF notes:

“In this hypercompetitive market, having great content is no longer enough. Media enterprises need to integrate their content into high-quality user experiences, with customized content, better viewing recommendations, more personalized and relevant adverts, and online tools to recreate those ‘office water-cooler’ conversations about the latest hit TV series.”

Breaking down the IT challenges facing media

As media organizations look to transform, they face challenges in five areas:

1) The need for speed and scale to enhance their competitive position: media organizations need to operate in real time, and this often means the network needs to scale rapidly to handle sudden spikes in demand. Major breaking news, or a major annual event, for example, can put strain on a network as users flock to watch it on their mobile devices.

2) Building trust and loyalty among audiences. Across the world, trust in the media is at an all-time low. Audiences increasingly expect the media to validate their existing perspective on the world, and while they will be fiercely loyal as long as this happens, they’re also more than willing to unsubscribe if they become unhappy with the coverage.

Media organizations need to ensure that their platforms support the trust that customers put in them. This means a reliable standard of service, ease of accessibility, and a platform-agnostic approach to the presentation of information.

3) Personalization and the delivery of algorithm-driven content. Personalization is more critical than ever. Media platforms are bloated with content, and not all of it is relevant to the interests of each individual user. This drives interest in algorithmically-delivered “what to watch next” suggestions, and curated lists of content by genre are of critical importance.

4) The sheer volume of information. Soon, 8K televisions will become mainstream and consumers will demand content for them. Meanwhile, more and more devices are streaming higher quality content than ever. Media companies need highly available, high-capacity storage to handle the demand.

5) Media companies, like with all organizations that operate in the cloud, are required to meet ever-more strict data compliance requirements, according to laws in the US, EU and elsewhere. Data risk remains one of the most significant concerns to CIOs and boards of all organizations, and media organizations are at the forefront of that.

In addition to managing data, media organizations also need to be aware of the cost of outages given the real-time nature of content delivery. The potential reputational and goodwill damage that would be caused to a media organization if a major television show or sporting event was disrupted would be incredible, and media organizations are very award of their absolute need for 24/7 uptime.

The detikNetwork story

detikNetwork is one of the biggest success stories to come out of the Indonesian media environment. It is a network group, having been founded by Detikom (founded in 1998) and CNN Indonesia (founded in 2015). From its launch as a joint venture, detikNetwork now consists of eight digital media brands, and continues to grow.

Within the group, the cornerstone news website, Detik.com, has become an invaluable resource to Indonesians. With approximately 180 million visits every day, it is one of the top 10 most-visited websites in Indonesia, and a top 250 website in the world.

The company has come to rely on the HUAWEI Content Delivery Network (CDN) to support its ongoing reach and growth.

detikNetwork was struggling with the scalability and agility of its environment, despite being a business set up with a digital-first focus from the outset. Chief among its concerns was the MotoGP rights that it had acquired, as the exclusive digital broadcasting partner for the event. MotoGP is a global sport, but the epicentre of its popularity is in Indonesia, where it pulls in some truly astounding numbers. With Indonesia again hosting a MotoGP race, that popularity is exploding even further.

This meant that detikNetwork was holding one of the most valuable sporting properties in Indonesia, but it also meant that the company needed to be able to rapidly scale to accommodate the spikes in demand. Furthermore, the pandemic meant that detikNetwork was facing a challenge to find cost efficiencies without compromising the delivery of quality content.

HUAWEI’s CDN was able to deliver the scalability and agility that detikNetwork needed. Built on a global network of more than 2,800 edge nodes, smart cache technology, and a big investment in bandwidth, the CDN offers low latency, and high transfer speeds for petabytes of content. Meanwhile, caching content on the network reduces the number of requests to origin ECSs, saving as much as 50 per cent on the equivalent bandwidth cost.

Built-in DDoS protection, anti-hotlinking, IP trustlists and blocklists, and HTTPS acceleration also all mean that detikNetwork was able to protect itself from the common attack vectors that media organizations face. Finally, detailed statistics, real-time monitoring and flexible billing all mean that the company was able to achieve optimal efficiency without compromising on service delivery.

Huawei is also investing more deeply into Indonesia directly, with the upcoming launch of a new data centre in the country. This will help it continue to serve organizations like detikNetwork with scalable, cost-effective access to the capacity and quality network they need to grow a vibrant media business in one of the most populated and media-hungry nations on earth.

For more information on HUAWEI’s Content Delivery Network and the HUAWEI CLOUD, click here.