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Nine Entertainment Company (NEC) Story

Stephen Kyefulumya
Stephen Kyefulumya

The Nine Entertainment Company developed a mobile app called 9NEWS Alerts to deliver breaking news and localized information to users based on their location. They used tools like Microsoft Azure, .NET, and Xamarin to build the app, which allows users to receive push notifications on topics they select. Over 200,000 people have downloaded the app since its 2015 launch. The auto-scaling capabilities of Azure allow the app to scale quickly from 30,000 to 200,000 notifications per hour without issues during peak periods. The tools helped accelerate development and reduced costs.

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In todays fragmented world of seemingly unlimited media channels, news travels fastand gets old fast. Capturing and keeping viewers and subscribers is no longer so much a game of news scoops and trusted newscasters, but of how personalized news can be. People still want to hear about big stories, but they especially want the news that may affect their lives most, day to day, hour by hour, and often minute by minute. Thats why the Sydney, Australiabased Nine Entertainment Company (NEC), one of the nations leading media and entertainment groups, designed a mobile app that could deliver both: 9NEWS Alerts. Our NEC IT developers really showed a lot of creative software engineering in addressing competitive requirements such as geo-targeted, location-based services, and also in solving the scalability issues. Rich features in Azure provided the tools they needed to do that. Henri Paget, Executive Producer, 9News.com.au, Nine Entertainment Company Delivering breaking news, localized to users
Customer Name: Nine Entertainment Company (NEC) Industry: Media & cable Country or Region: Australia Customer Website: www.nineentertainment.com.au Employee Size: 3,800 Customer Profile Nine Entertainment Company is a leading media and entertainment group focused on the delivery of premium video content to all Australians. It delivers free-to-air TV broadcasting, subscription video-on-demand, digital channels, and online content. Henri Paget is executive producer of 9News.com.au, which is owned by NEC and is Australias premier news source. He recalls the challenge: We needed a way to reach our audience with breaking news, without them having to come to the 9News website or our other channels, whether online social media or over-the-air. We needed a way to push notifications about stories to people on their mobile devices 24x7, no matter where they might be. Paget and his 9News team members sat down with their IT support team to brainstorm ideas for a mobile news application. They came up with the concept of providing a free, mobile application called 9NEWS Alerts for users of iOS and Android devices, downloadable from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. 9News Alerts is for people interested in breaking news across a wide range of topics, like crime, weather, traffic, finance, and entertainment, says Stephen Kyefulumya, NEC IT Business Solutions Manager. But, unlike any other major news apps in Australia, it can reach people based on their location, if they choose. So when a local news story breaks near them, we can tell them about it using latitude and longitude coordinates within a radius of a few kilometers of where they are. Localized news alerts in the land of fire and floods Since the launch of 9NEWS Alerts in December 2015, more than 200,000 people have downloaded the app, with about half activating the location-based feature of its core push-notification capability. Australia is known as the land of fire and floods, says Kyefulumya. So its no surprise that so many of our subscribers want weather and emergency notifications. Traffic alerts are another big reason they turn on the location feature. After subscribers download and install the 9NEWS Alerts app, it works by scanning the NEC 9News website every 60 seconds for news in whatever topics the subscriber has selected for alerts or all topics if none was selected. If they feel theyre getting too many alerts, they can easily dial that back by changing their choices using the apps settings function, Kyefulumya says. According to Wayne Schwebel, the 9News software architect and development team leader, the design goals were straightforward. We wanted an easy-to-use app with location-based features, plus a great-looking interface thats simple to navigate and delivers the most information, so users can scan all the news stories quickly and get the info they need in a timely way, he says. At the same time, we didnt want users to find the app intrusive or be bombarded with spam-level notifications all day long. Microsoft .NET and Azure, a powerful combination For their development tools and platforms, Schwebel and his team turned to the Microsoft .NET Framework, a familiar environment, and the Microsoft Azure App Service, especially its Mobile Apps. Although its hard to say exactly how much we were able to compress our development cycles and cut our time-to-market, clear- ly the powerful capabilities we got from the many tools in Microsoft Azure and Xamarin delivered meaningful time and cost savings. Stephen Kyefulumya, NEC IT Business Solutions Manager, Nine Entertainment Company
For delivering content, they chose Microsoft Azure Media Services. The Microsoft Azure App Service is a fully managed platform-as-a- service (PaaS) offering for professional developers that brings a rich set of coding capabilities to web, mobile, and integration requirements. Inside that PaaS is Mobile Apps, a highly scalable development platform that helps them meet their design goals for 9NEWS Alerts. Our familiarity with the Microsoft .NET platform led us to evaluate the Microsoft Azure App Service, but the really deciding factors were the latters Mobile Services toolset, such as push notifications, and its many other powerful but easy-to-use features like auto-scaling, Schwebel says. As far as tools go, they are extremely low-friction, making it especially easy to build and spin up a new feature. Auto-scaling addresses push notifications during peak demand periods Rapid scalability for peak demands was one big issue they had to address with creative software engineering and the Azure Mobile Apps toolset. At 8:00 A.M. on typical weekday morning, for example, the 9NEWS Alerts can get 100,000 subscriber requests for traffic conditions. With the Azure geo-targeting features, were tracking all these people every 500 meters or so through the network cell towers as each one of them changes locations, so we had to figure out how to deliver that up-to-the-minute information without bringing down our servers, says Rossano Gallardo, NEC Enterprise Applications Developer. Azures queuing and service-bus features made it easy to build in the scalability we needed. Now we can queue all these closely timed requests and notifications into batches with the Azure service bus, and then release them to the database and push those updates to where those people are. In fact, before the 9NEWS Alerts development team members turned to the Azure auto-scaling feature, they had built their own notification engine. But it was sized for much smaller scaling demands compared to what grew out of the huge success of the 9NEWS Alerts launch. Trying to push out even 5,000 notifications at once could have taken hours with servers running red hot, according to Gallardo. Now, with Azure Mobile Apps auto-scaling capabilities enabled, the 9NEWS Alerts app can scale in just a few seconds from delivering 30,000 to 200,000 geo-specific notifications an hour with no glitches, Gallardo says. Because Azures push-notification feature is separated from having to deal with the code differences of various notification platforms, its incredibly simple for us to push our notifications out in a highly scalable way. Xamarin delivers native code across platforms Another critically important toolset used to build the 9NEWS Alerts app was Xamarin. Provided by a Microsoft company of the same name, it enabled
the team to code the app using C# and the .NET Framework, and then deliver iOS and Android versions in their native code. Because Xamarin compiles down to native iOS code and Android code independently, we get native performance once its actually deployed to the devices, Schwebel says. Without native code, subtle differences can really affect the user experience, he adds. You get odd interface behaviors on your mobile device, like when your mobiles browser captures your touches but scrolling isnt smooth. That can be due to a 300-millisecond lag in detecting your scrolling because its trying to detect other things that the browser wants to do. The team also found the disaster-recovery feature of Azure Web Apps to be quite useful, because it captures a snapshot of the apps code every 60 seconds. Being able to wind back to a particular minute in our coding was fantastic, Schwebel says. Creative software engineering accelerates time-to-market Kyefulumya lauds the Azure and Xamarin tools for helping the NEC IT development team accelerate the 9NEWS Alerts apps development and market introduction. Although its hard to say exactly how much we were able to compress our development cycles and cut our time-to-market, clearly the powerful capabilities we got from the many tools in Microsoft Azure and Xamarin delivered meaningful time and cost savings, he says. As 9News.com.au executive producer, Paget credits the NEC IT development team with providing the viewers of NECs other existing news channels with a differentiated, complementary way to learn about news that most affects their lives, while also staying abreast of bigger, more regional and national stories. The 9NEWS Alerts app has exceeded our expectations in terms of the functionality it can deliver as well as the number of subscribers it has attracted, he says. Our NEC IT developers really showed a lot of creative software engineering in addressing competitive requirements such as geo-targeted, location-based services, and also in solving the scalability issues. Rich features in Azure provided the tools they needed to do that. Software Microsoft Azure - Microsoft Azure App Service - Microsoft Azure Mobile App Services - Microsoft Azure Media Services - Microsoft Azure Web Apps Microsoft .NET Framework Xamarin software This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published July 2016. Our familiarity with the Microsoft .NET platform led us to evaluate the Microsoft Azure App Service, but the really deciding factors were the latters Mobile Services toolset, such as push notifications, and its many other powerful but easy-to-use features like auto-scaling. Wayne Schwebel, Software Architect/Team Lead, Nine Entertainment Company

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Nine Entertainment Company (NEC) Story

  • 1. In todays fragmented world of seemingly unlimited media channels, news travels fastand gets old fast. Capturing and keeping viewers and subscribers is no longer so much a game of news scoops and trusted newscasters, but of how personalized news can be. People still want to hear about big stories, but they especially want the news that may affect their lives most, day to day, hour by hour, and often minute by minute. Thats why the Sydney, Australiabased Nine Entertainment Company (NEC), one of the nations leading media and entertainment groups, designed a mobile app that could deliver both: 9NEWS Alerts. Our NEC IT developers really showed a lot of creative software engineering in addressing competitive requirements such as geo-targeted, location-based services, and also in solving the scalability issues. Rich features in Azure provided the tools they needed to do that. Henri Paget, Executive Producer, 9News.com.au, Nine Entertainment Company Delivering breaking news, localized to users
  • 2. Customer Name: Nine Entertainment Company (NEC) Industry: Media & cable Country or Region: Australia Customer Website: www.nineentertainment.com.au Employee Size: 3,800 Customer Profile Nine Entertainment Company is a leading media and entertainment group focused on the delivery of premium video content to all Australians. It delivers free-to-air TV broadcasting, subscription video-on-demand, digital channels, and online content. Henri Paget is executive producer of 9News.com.au, which is owned by NEC and is Australias premier news source. He recalls the challenge: We needed a way to reach our audience with breaking news, without them having to come to the 9News website or our other channels, whether online social media or over-the-air. We needed a way to push notifications about stories to people on their mobile devices 24x7, no matter where they might be. Paget and his 9News team members sat down with their IT support team to brainstorm ideas for a mobile news application. They came up with the concept of providing a free, mobile application called 9NEWS Alerts for users of iOS and Android devices, downloadable from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. 9News Alerts is for people interested in breaking news across a wide range of topics, like crime, weather, traffic, finance, and entertainment, says Stephen Kyefulumya, NEC IT Business Solutions Manager. But, unlike any other major news apps in Australia, it can reach people based on their location, if they choose. So when a local news story breaks near them, we can tell them about it using latitude and longitude coordinates within a radius of a few kilometers of where they are. Localized news alerts in the land of fire and floods Since the launch of 9NEWS Alerts in December 2015, more than 200,000 people have downloaded the app, with about half activating the location-based feature of its core push-notification capability. Australia is known as the land of fire and floods, says Kyefulumya. So its no surprise that so many of our subscribers want weather and emergency notifications. Traffic alerts are another big reason they turn on the location feature. After subscribers download and install the 9NEWS Alerts app, it works by scanning the NEC 9News website every 60 seconds for news in whatever topics the subscriber has selected for alerts or all topics if none was selected. If they feel theyre getting too many alerts, they can easily dial that back by changing their choices using the apps settings function, Kyefulumya says. According to Wayne Schwebel, the 9News software architect and development team leader, the design goals were straightforward. We wanted an easy-to-use app with location-based features, plus a great-looking interface thats simple to navigate and delivers the most information, so users can scan all the news stories quickly and get the info they need in a timely way, he says. At the same time, we didnt want users to find the app intrusive or be bombarded with spam-level notifications all day long. Microsoft .NET and Azure, a powerful combination For their development tools and platforms, Schwebel and his team turned to the Microsoft .NET Framework, a familiar environment, and the Microsoft Azure App Service, especially its Mobile Apps. Although its hard to say exactly how much we were able to compress our development cycles and cut our time-to-market, clear- ly the powerful capabilities we got from the many tools in Microsoft Azure and Xamarin delivered meaningful time and cost savings. Stephen Kyefulumya, NEC IT Business Solutions Manager, Nine Entertainment Company
  • 3. For delivering content, they chose Microsoft Azure Media Services. The Microsoft Azure App Service is a fully managed platform-as-a- service (PaaS) offering for professional developers that brings a rich set of coding capabilities to web, mobile, and integration requirements. Inside that PaaS is Mobile Apps, a highly scalable development platform that helps them meet their design goals for 9NEWS Alerts. Our familiarity with the Microsoft .NET platform led us to evaluate the Microsoft Azure App Service, but the really deciding factors were the latters Mobile Services toolset, such as push notifications, and its many other powerful but easy-to-use features like auto-scaling, Schwebel says. As far as tools go, they are extremely low-friction, making it especially easy to build and spin up a new feature. Auto-scaling addresses push notifications during peak demand periods Rapid scalability for peak demands was one big issue they had to address with creative software engineering and the Azure Mobile Apps toolset. At 8:00 A.M. on typical weekday morning, for example, the 9NEWS Alerts can get 100,000 subscriber requests for traffic conditions. With the Azure geo-targeting features, were tracking all these people every 500 meters or so through the network cell towers as each one of them changes locations, so we had to figure out how to deliver that up-to-the-minute information without bringing down our servers, says Rossano Gallardo, NEC Enterprise Applications Developer. Azures queuing and service-bus features made it easy to build in the scalability we needed. Now we can queue all these closely timed requests and notifications into batches with the Azure service bus, and then release them to the database and push those updates to where those people are. In fact, before the 9NEWS Alerts development team members turned to the Azure auto-scaling feature, they had built their own notification engine. But it was sized for much smaller scaling demands compared to what grew out of the huge success of the 9NEWS Alerts launch. Trying to push out even 5,000 notifications at once could have taken hours with servers running red hot, according to Gallardo. Now, with Azure Mobile Apps auto-scaling capabilities enabled, the 9NEWS Alerts app can scale in just a few seconds from delivering 30,000 to 200,000 geo-specific notifications an hour with no glitches, Gallardo says. Because Azures push-notification feature is separated from having to deal with the code differences of various notification platforms, its incredibly simple for us to push our notifications out in a highly scalable way. Xamarin delivers native code across platforms Another critically important toolset used to build the 9NEWS Alerts app was Xamarin. Provided by a Microsoft company of the same name, it enabled
  • 4. the team to code the app using C# and the .NET Framework, and then deliver iOS and Android versions in their native code. Because Xamarin compiles down to native iOS code and Android code independently, we get native performance once its actually deployed to the devices, Schwebel says. Without native code, subtle differences can really affect the user experience, he adds. You get odd interface behaviors on your mobile device, like when your mobiles browser captures your touches but scrolling isnt smooth. That can be due to a 300-millisecond lag in detecting your scrolling because its trying to detect other things that the browser wants to do. The team also found the disaster-recovery feature of Azure Web Apps to be quite useful, because it captures a snapshot of the apps code every 60 seconds. Being able to wind back to a particular minute in our coding was fantastic, Schwebel says. Creative software engineering accelerates time-to-market Kyefulumya lauds the Azure and Xamarin tools for helping the NEC IT development team accelerate the 9NEWS Alerts apps development and market introduction. Although its hard to say exactly how much we were able to compress our development cycles and cut our time-to-market, clearly the powerful capabilities we got from the many tools in Microsoft Azure and Xamarin delivered meaningful time and cost savings, he says. As 9News.com.au executive producer, Paget credits the NEC IT development team with providing the viewers of NECs other existing news channels with a differentiated, complementary way to learn about news that most affects their lives, while also staying abreast of bigger, more regional and national stories. The 9NEWS Alerts app has exceeded our expectations in terms of the functionality it can deliver as well as the number of subscribers it has attracted, he says. Our NEC IT developers really showed a lot of creative software engineering in addressing competitive requirements such as geo-targeted, location-based services, and also in solving the scalability issues. Rich features in Azure provided the tools they needed to do that. Software Microsoft Azure - Microsoft Azure App Service - Microsoft Azure Mobile App Services - Microsoft Azure Media Services - Microsoft Azure Web Apps Microsoft .NET Framework Xamarin software This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published July 2016. Our familiarity with the Microsoft .NET platform led us to evaluate the Microsoft Azure App Service, but the really deciding factors were the latters Mobile Services toolset, such as push notifications, and its many other powerful but easy-to-use features like auto-scaling. Wayne Schwebel, Software Architect/Team Lead, Nine Entertainment Company