Cable, satellite and IPTV service provider FOXTEL is Australia’s largest subscription television provider delivering content to over 1.63 million homes. The broadcaster strives to ensure over six million viewers find TV they want to watch every time they switch on their television through delivery of more than 200 channels covering news, sport, general entertainment, movies, documentaries, music and children’s programming. As the media and entertainment industry moves away from tape-based workflows and more and more to digital assets, FOXTEL had a need to control increasing costs associated with shipping physical tapes, automate the ingest, management and reporting of content across their broadcast chain while cutting overall operating costs and improving employee productivity.

After an evaluation of technologies and close collaboration, FOXTEL chose Aspera to deliver a solution comprised of several software modules including the Aspera Orchestrator workflow automation platform, as the core of its new contribution file delivery system. Maximizing usage of bandwidth, Aspera experts designed a cost-effective and scalable workflow architecture where after a high speed upload of media assets from a large group of content providers, the files first move through a virus scanner check to maintain integrity and safety of the entire FOXTEL network. If an intrusion is detected, the file is quarantined and a notification sent to the administrator for further action. Once having been declared clean, programming is then routed, paired with metadata as required and cycled  through the rest of the of the supply chain to separate and specific HD and SD storage destinations to await scheduled play out.

The deployed system has been successful in reducing the burden on FOXTEL human resources due to automation and allows for the budgeting of bandwidth usage based on network capacity as well as the need to prioritize and expedite the reception of the most urgent files. The Aspera Console, a browser-based centralized management application, not only empowers automated file transfers, but quite importantly to FOXTEL management for billing purposes, provides for reports which can be organized, sorted and filtered by virtually any transfer attribute (paths, IPs, status, etc.), including custom categories and metadata assigned to transfers within the various Aspera applications. Report templates are scheduled for automatic runs and email delivery to the appropriate functional groups.

Aspera Solution for FOXTEL

Server Components

Aspera Enterprise Server

The industry standard, Aspera Enterprise Server is a universal file transfer platform combining next-generation transport with exceptional transfer and user management capabilities for enterprise applications serving up files, directories and large data sets over the WAN. Built on patented fasp™ technology, the Aspera Enterprise Server delivers maximum transfer throughput independent of distance and network conditions, typically achieving 10-100x speed improvement over FTP/SCP, with end-to-end security and exceptional bandwidth control.

The advanced desktop transfer client extends the feature set of Aspera Client with support for two concurrent incoming connections. Aspera Point-to-Point can also be managed and controlled remotely via Aspera Console.

An advanced web-based management application providing comprehensive, centralized control and complete visibility over your Aspera network. Aspera Console’s role-based access control allows users to monitor, start transfers, and generate fully customizable reports. Administrators have the ability to centrally configure all managed Aspera nodes, create and manage users and user groups, initiate and automate transfer jobs, and precisely control and monitor all transfer and bandwidth utilization parameters. Console offers comprehensive real-time notification, logging and reporting capabilities, while maintaining a centralized transfer history database for detailed auditing and customized reporting.

The Aspera Orchestrator is a web-based application and integration platform for creating and managing automated Aspera file transfer workflows. The software includes an interactive designer for easy authoring of complex workflow sequences, a browser interface for monitoring active workflows and their status, and a library of plug-ins for leading transcoding, quality control, virus scanning, ad insertion, and digital fingerprinting solutions.