Mirror Image Delivers The Grammy’sBy Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
February 9, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — With last month’s Golden Globe Awards, and the upcoming Grammy’s and Oscar’s, it is safe to say that awards season is already in full swing.
This Sunday, millions of viewers around the world will tune in to watch their favorite artists and bands perform and make long-winded acceptance speeches at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards (grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/). And like most awards shows, CBS is broadcasting the red carpet festivities before the show, live from the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, California.
The network’s Web site will be delivering live video on demand streaming of the event, courtesy of content network delivery provider Mirror Image Internet (mirror-image.com) and hosting solutions provider RIS Technology (ristech.net).
Having first collaborated in 2004, Mirror Image Internet and RIS Technology are extending their relationship into its third year. Together, the two have provided services to high-profile clients such as the Grammy Awards producers The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and the Miss Universe Organization, producers of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA competitions.
To deliver the Grammy Awards red carpet ceremony, RIS Technology will provide its multiple, dynamically scaled Web servers while Mirror Image’s will use its patented content delivery network to enable the Grammy Web site to accommodate surges in Web traffic before, during and after major events.
“We’ll be the backend delivery of the VOD,” says Jim Hart, VP of sales and marketing for Mirror Image Internet. ”[The Grammy's IT team] are going to go ahead and capture it, decoding it themselves, do the set up then we’ll take on delivering the different media formats to the global audience.”
Martin Hayward, marketing director for Mirror Image, says that the organizers of the Grammy’s anticipate a significant flow of online traffic in the hours leading up to the broadcast to catch the red carpet ceremony.
The bandwidth-intensive streaming video component of the Web site will create massive strain on the site due to the additional content and increased traffic. Mirror Image’s patented global CDN lessens will help the Grammy’s IT department to alleviate this strain by offloading the traffic to Mirror Image’s network and ensuring 100 percent uptime of its site.
“We’ll be using our network because it’s a reliable network and [the Grammy's IT team] is expecting a number of people to go to the site and watch the red carpet ceremony,” says Hayward. “They need that security to make sure that their site won’t be overloaded and have any problems. Using Mirror Image’s CDN network, they will not have any problems.”
