Take me out to the Web.
One billion minutes of streaming media? Baseball fans want it. Sun technology and MLB.com deliver it--and more.
With the new season now underway, baseball fans around the world are flocking to MLB.com, the official Web portal of Major League Baseball. This feature-rich, multimedia-enabled site lets die-hard enthusiasts and casual visitors alike check scores, watch highlights, buy products, and even manage a virtual team.
Sun Technology on MLB.com
MLB.com runs on an all-Sun platform and Major League Baseball Advanced Media has developed a digital asset management archive by leveraging Sun's Digital Asset Management Reference Architecture.
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MLB.com Stats
- One of the most heavily-trafficked sites on the Internet
- More live events than any other site
- 1 billion minutes of streaming media in 2004
- 1 billion site visitors in 2004
- 90 million page views during Game Seven of the 2004 American League Championship Series
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MLB.com, which is one of the Internet's most heavily-trafficked sites, offers more live events than any other Web site. In 2004, MLB.com delivered more than 1 billion minutes of streaming media and 2430 full-length games to more than 1 billion visitors. During Game Seven of the American League Championship Series, the site served up a staggering 90 million page views to visitors caught up in the excitement.
A strategic technology alliance between Sun and Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet division of Major League Baseball, helps make all this happen. MLBAM asked Sun to step to the plate for one simple reason, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of MLBAM.
"After evaluating our choices, we determined Sun is the only company that can deliver the performance, scalability, and reliability required for the real-time demands of our more than 1 billion visitors worldwide over the course of 2430 games per year."
Business Drivers
MLBAM took on the task of building a world-class interactive media channel with several goals:
- Generate more awareness, participation, and excitement among the growing global community of Major League Baseball fans by leveraging the interactive, real-time nature of the Web
- Increase revenue opportunities by enabling millions of fans to buy products, subscribe to value-added services, and purchase tickets at the site
- Boost site traffic to attract advertisers eager to present their goods and services to such a large audience
- Provide ongoing revenue streams from broadcasters that need to access game highlights in real time, by offering live and archived media of Major League Baseball games
The Technology
MLB.com runs in a Sun-built data center in New York City; a mirror site in Chicago is scheduled to come online this July. The New York facility features a wide range of enterprise-class Sun Fire servers supporting MLB.com's data-intensive applications. MLB.com currently runs the Solaris 9 Operating System (Solaris OS) and MLBAM expects to migrate to the Solaris 10 OS soon, because of the new release's real-time troubleshooting tools and enhanced security, according to Justin Shaffer, vice president and chief architect for MLBAM. Along with the hardware and software, Sun provides consulting support and training services for the MLB.com infrastructure.
The Sun StorEdge disc and tape library systems meet MLB.com's massive storage requirements for recording and archiving every game. These versatile, scalable storage solutions provide fans with access to enhanced video content such as pitch-by-pitch views of games, pre- and postgame shows, analysis, and enhanced search and on demand capabilities.
For its Web services and software application development, MLBAM utilizes the Sun Java Enterprise System, a core set of industry-leading integrated development tools and technologies. MLB.com's Web services enable real-time interactive capabilities such as live Internet broadcasts, digital downloads of all playoff games, live pregame shows, and other expanded broadband capabilities.
With MLB.com now running on an all-Sun platform, MLBAM has successfully leveraged Sun's Digital Asset Management Reference Architecture to develop its own digital asset management archive. This system, expected to come online during the 2005 season, will enable subscribers to access and view in real time any media stored in the MLB.com archive that can easily be indexed by player, team, location, and event.
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Sun technology meets the robust requirements of MLB.com's archive of searchable video clips.
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Win-Win Partnership
The partnership with Sun has helped MLBAM to realize its bold initiative for reaching more fans and generating more excitement while producing additional revenue.
"We're continuing to expand our horizons on the distribution side of our business," says Shaffer. "In addition to catering to the fans who access MLB.com, we can now distribute our content to a wide variety of partners that want media content in a higher quality format for video on demand services."
Shaffer is enthusiastic about the continuing support he receives from Sun. "We love Sun. We make no bones about it. We're very pleased with their technology, their engineers, and their professional services team. As a partner, we've been working with them since day one. We get really good service and support and we know we can trust them."
Shaffer is also impressed with the stable cost of keeping the MLB.com infrastructure running smoothly. "We have significantly more hardware and software to support our burgeoning population of site visitors--and our revenues are climbing--yet our operating expenses are about the same as they used to be. That's what I call a win-win for MLBAM.
"Sun and MLBAM have created a business and content management model that presents a best practices solution for every company producing media content today."
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