Sveriges Television (SVT) Sees $100,000 in Annual Savings and a Very Happy IT Team with Infoblox
“When calculating the time that used to be spent by our staff of experts addressing DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management issues with our old systems, we are now saving well over $100,000 annually with the Infoblox platform.” — Anders Lundberg, Manager Network Services Infrastructure, Sveriges Television
THE CUSTOMER – SVERIGES TELEVISION (SVT)
Sveriges Television (SVT) is the Swedish public service television company with the widest range of programming of all TV companies in Sweden.
Today, SVT operates six channels, has 29 offices all over Sweden, and approximately, 3,000 employees. In 2007, approximately 80% of the 100 most popular Swedish television programs came from SVT. Approximately 90% of the 3.4 million Swedish households pay the license fee for access to SVT. And, together with the public service radio (SR), SVT is the most trusted media outlet in Sweden. Delivery of SVT programs is dependent upon a highly reliable and 24×7 available network infrastructure.
THE CHALLENGE
Standardizing on a Platform of Mixed Systems with Poor Integration
SVT previously relied on a combination of Microsoft AD, Microsoft DNS/DHCP, and BIND systems to deliver Domain Name System resolution and IP address assignment (DHCP) services; however, the system was difficult to administer and didn’t integrate well with SVT’s state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment, which required reverse lookups. These searches couldn’t be accommodated by the BIND and Microsoft systems, which often resulted in network downtime that could take hours and sometimes days to completely remedy.
Customer: Sveriges Television
Industry: Entertainment, Media, and Communications
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Objectives: Migrate away from mixed Microsoft and BIND environment, Eliminate extensive downtime periods, Adopt a solution that can support broadcast equipment
Results: Nonstop internal and external DNS, DHCP, and IPAM, Seamless integration with state-of-the-art broadcast equipment, 24x7 uptime, Significant administrative advantages and cost savings
Products: NIOS DDI
Anders Lundberg, Network Manager of Infrastructure Services, SVT, commented, “With our old systems, there were 15 different people working on it, errors were common and there were frequent caching/reverse lookup issues.”
In 2007, SVT realized it couldn’t continue relying on its legacy, mixed DNS and DHCP systems, and instead, needed to standardize on a comprehensive platform that would not only integrate well with its broadcast equipment but increase reliability and provide much needed IP address management capabilities, something virtually impossible with the old solution.
THE SOLUTION
One Comprehensive Platform for All Things DNS, DHCP, and IPAM
SVT successfully transitioned away from its mixed Microsoft and BIND environment to Infoblox for external and internal DNS, DHCP, and IP address management services. Today, all broadcast equipment is supported by Infoblox systems.
Approximately 24 Infoblox appliances are deployed throughout Sweden. Six appliances are deployed in HA pairs at SVT headquarters in Stockholm and 18 are at various regional sites with many smaller sites relying on the regional appliances for DNS and DHCP services.
And, with Infoblox’s built-in IP address management functionality, SVT is transitioning many IP address-related tasks to the help desk staff to help offload IP-related PC support issues and installation of printers, which are on a different subnet. Help desk staff are now giving out the IP and performing the reservation for it.
THE RESULT
A Marked Improvement in Stability and Uptime for Customers and in Administrative Cycles for SVT
The IT staff are extremely pleased with the results so far.
Lundberg comments, “With more than 3 million viewers accessing our television programs 24×7, downtime can directly impact customer satisfaction. Infoblox has dramatically improved the reliability of DNS and DHCP services and helped us to achieve greater stability in our network overall. We also have a much easier environment to control and administer.”
In addition to the markedly improved reliability and uptime for essential DNS and DHCP services, the IT staff cites dramatically reduced administrative cycles as one of the top Infoblox solution benefits.
For example, the reverse lookup issue resulting from conflicts between the old Microsoft and BIND systems could take days of investigation by several expert groups to overcome.
Lundberg explains, “To address the reverse lookup issue, we had to clean the cache, which would only work sometimes but not always, and it would take an hour or two to find out. If it didn’t work, it could take days to clean up the resulting mess. Now with Infoblox, the issue doesn’t exist. We estimate an average operational cost savings of at least $42,000 annually just on this issue alone.”
Additionally, SVT experienced duplicate IP address issues with the old systems. When this, which was typically once a week, it often took three people an average of three hours to find the “rogue” access point that was put on the network. It takes time because it’s not just a quick adjustment to a single server; again, we to clean the cache and restart several servers.
Lundberg comments, “Now, using Infoblox for DHCP and IP address management, the system always pings the device and the network before an address is handed out so any conflict can be identified and resolved automatically. As a result, we haven’t had a conflicting address issue since deploying Infoblox. Eliminating the operation cycles that we used to spend chasing these issues has resulted in another estimated cost savings of approximately $42,000.”
Lundberg concludes, “These are just two examples and there are several more. Additionally, with Infoblox, we are taking advantage of the delegation capabilities and tools so more junior help desk personnel can perform many tasks that used to require experts. This represents significant cost savings for us too. Overall, when calculating the time that used to be spent by our staff of experts addressing DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management issues with our old systems, we are now saving well over $100,000 annually with the Infoblox platform.”