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From its early roots as an independent record company, Chrysalis Group* has grown to hold the unique position of being the only UK company to incorporate five main media sectors within its core business - television, radio, music, media products and new media.
Following the purchase of Chrysalis Records in 1989 by Thorn EMI*, the group diversified into radio broadcasting and television production. Chrysalis Radio, which includes London's Heart* 106.2 and the Galaxy* network, is now the fourth largest commercial radio group in the UK, with a total potential audience of over 24 million adults. Joint ventures with established TV production companies has made Chrysalis Visual Entertainment one of the largest production groups in the UK, with overseas interests in Holland, Spain and New Zealand.
The Problem
When James Brookes joined Chrysalis as Group IT Manager almost five years ago, he was tasked with devising and delivering a comprehensive long-term IT strategy and infrastructure that would unite the whole group and provide the necessary platform for growth. "Chrysalis has four main operating divisions: music publishing, TV - everything from Formula One coverage to Midsummer Murders, a radio network including Heart and Galaxy that spans the country, and our newest venture New Media, which despite only having a few key products is doing really well," says Brookes. "When I arrived only the new radio stations were into technology and they were using NetWare servers to deliver all the on air content."
One of the first tasks for Brookes and his team was to discover what the operating divisions really needed from their IT. "An artist and repertoire man doesn't want to write letters, he lives in a twilight world going out listening to bands play, he wants to use the web to find other interesting sources of new music and he needs to be able to write and receive email," explains Brookes. "Parts of our business aren't like a traditional office environment and we had to recognise that. For our music department, IT is a communication mechanism. The phone isn't always the best medium for them, but email works well, so keeping their Internet connectivity up and running 24 hours a day is important to them.
"Equally the radio stations have their own specific applications. Each station's record collection is digitised onto its Novell® servers, which have large capacity storage attached. Before broadcast the music play list is pre-selected and all the disc jockeys have to do is add their commentary.
"Record decks are still available in some studios, but they are rarely used today," says Brookes. "However, radio stations have their own high pressure points and with everything being digital, it's important that we have the infrastructure in place to deliver our broadcasts, otherwise the station loses its ability to generate the revenues it relies on."
The Solution
Chrysalis needed an infrastructure that would be reliable, robust and most importantly, available 24 hours a day, delivering a range of mission critical applications from standard office productivity tools like email, through to specialised applications for its radio and TV production teams. "I had a Novell based background," admits Brookes. "So I knew what was available and what it could do. NetWare® 4 had just been launched, and Novell eDirectory technology was really new. The plan was to create a cost effective, stable and scalable system that would meet the needs of the business as it continued to grow. The radio stations were already doing great stuff using NetWare, so our decision was to implement NetWare across the whole group - over 1000 users throughout the UK."
Chrysalis now operates a large distributed wide area network (WAN), linking its sites across the UK. Most of the wide area network connectivity is made up from megastream links managed by either Cable & Wireless* or BT*, while Chrysalis looks after the Cisco* routers and routes traffic flows. Rapid expansion of both staff and network traffic was a key consideration for Brookes in devising the IT strategy. "We needed a system that would allow us to grow, without having to enlarge the central IT support function. Novell eDirectory gave us the central platform for managing the services we deploy and deliver. It's our central point of administration, and helps us to keep our support costs to a minimum. The next stage is to pull our Windows NT* servers under the eDirectory framework using Novell Account Management for NT. At the moment, we spend as much time managing a handful of NT servers as we do our large distributed network environment."
Security is also essential for Chrysalis, "Without security, functionality can suffer," states Brookes. "Today you have to make strategic decisions based on the number one element - security. Novell delivers excellent security." GroupWise has been deployed as the email and collaborative tool, and its robustness and resistance to email virus attack has more than justified Brookes' decision.
The Implementation
As the radio side of the business was already using NetWare products, it was decided to expand the services initially around the radio offerings. "They were ahead with some basic infrastructure, the rest of the business had to play catch up," recalls Brookes. "So we tried a large GroupWise roll-out on them complete with training, as at that time nobody had any great knowledge of using email. It was a great learning experience for all our staff."
Novell BorderManager followed next to complete the security facilities. "We need something totally configurable because with over 1,000 media users with different creative needs we have to offer them the flexibility they need," says Brookes. "Some users need extensive access to the Internet for research purposes, while others only need high bandwidth to run real-time video clips. The whole ethos of Chrysalis is to cut out bureaucracy, so while we as IT need more control to manage the systems, we don't ever want the technology to get in the way of delivering services to our users."
Novell ZENworks for Desktops is used extensively to manage all the desktops. Some are locked down and do restrict the activities of users, while others are left more open. Applications are delivered and installed remotely and self-healing applications now save Brookes' team a lot of hours of effort and work. "Simply rolling out a new version of our anti-virus software to 1,000 users could potentially be a nightmare," says Brookes. "Now we do it at the click of a button." Remote control is used to offer support and, if needed, to actually train people online, helping them learn how to resolve their problems.
"People come to Chrysalis because they are great producers or DJs, not because they are IT whiz kids, so our function has to be to help them do the things they want to do," says Brookes. "And yes, we get a lot of seemingly stupid requests, but our job is to help them out quickly and effectively so they don't become frustrated. And it's amazing how quickly people pick it up."
Customer Value
Novell products allow Chrysalis to run its wide-ranging business operations - from making TV and radio programmes, to developing and delivering sports information. Even with a corporate licensing agreement, buying and deploying the products is only one part of the total cost of ownership (TCO) equation, according to Brookes. Supporting and rolling out the network and applications is the significant part. "My departmental costs are greater than the hardware and software costs. Novell products save my staff time, and that allows them to give better service to the users - that's the real cost benefit of Novell."
Novell and NetWare are registered trademarks and eDirectory, BorderManager and ZENworks are trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the USA and other countries. *All third party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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