Sky

Delivering industry-leading viewer experiences while minimizing costs across CDN partners. 

Conviva and Sky partnered to develop an innovative way of delivering the highest over-the-top (OTT) video quality possible for Sky viewers while minimizing content delivery network (CDN) costs. Conviva’s quality of experience (QoE) analytics helped Sky discover a direct correlation between viewer engagement and buffering. Sky realized that viewer engagement dropped significantly when the buffering ratio hit or exceeded 0.4%. Sky then integrated Conviva’s Precision – a resource optimization intelligence feed – to inform their proprietary technology stack to make real-time CDN switching decisions based on thresholds and costs.

CHALLENGE

Conviva and Sky partnered to develop an innovative way of delivering the highest OTT video quality possible for Sky viewers while minimizing CDN costs. Conviva’s QoE analytics helped Sky discover a direct correlation between viewer engagement and buffering. Sky realized that viewer engagement dropped significantly when the buffering ratio hit or exceeded 0.4%. Sky then integrated Conviva’s Precision – a resource optimization intelligence feed – to inform their proprietary technology stack to make real-time CDN switching decisions based on thresholds and costs.

SOLUTION

Precision failure detection module reacted almost instantaneously, directing all new attempts to an alternative CDN, which was performing well. When Sky is able to keep high levels of QoE while minimizing CDN costs, not only will this drive efficiency, but also deliver industry-leading viewer experience – eventually contributing to more viewers. Sky integrated Conviva’s Precision into their proprietary technology stack to optimize QoE while minimizing CDN costs whenever possible in concert with maximizing viewer satisfaction.

RESULT

Before the issue, CDN B was getting fewer than 100 sessions per five minutes. During the problem period, it got 4,900 sessions in 15 minutes, saving over 4.5K sessions. This resulted in fewer calls and complaints to Sky’s customer care group as well as much higher viewer satisfaction levels, which in turn contributed to an overall conservation of Sky’s brand value.