The Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information (MOCI) has rolled out a major archiving project with EMC Middle East, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, in a bid to streamline and digitize its information assets. As part of the ongoing transformation of Saudi TV and Radio, the new EMC information management solution will provide the Ministry with greater control over its media assets to boost its workflow efficiency and reduce cost of operations while protecting its legacy and automating the retrieval of information to streamline broadcasting services.
The broadcast sector in Saudi Arabia has grown rapidly in recent years, and the newly adopted digital Archive Information Management Solution will facilitate Saudi TV and Radio in seamlessly digitizing its analog media assets representing years of the Kingdom’s heritage and in transforming its services to the broadcast industry standard. The Ministry is committed to protect the Kingdom’s legacy and to provide all Saudi citizens with a focal source of information about Saudi Arabia which will service its country-wide network of information centers. The EMC solution will protect over 270,000 video and 500,000 audio tapes that have the data on the history and culture of the Kingdom encompassing over 50 years.
“The protection of the Kingdom’s media heritage comes as a top priority for the Ministry. Availability and accessibility and ease of access to media assets are crucial factors in the broadcast industry to ensure effectiveness and maximum quality of broadcast services. By deploying EMC’s solution at two main sites, we will be able to digitize our Media Assets, to easily duplicate it thus protecting our rich heritage and ensuring constant, redundant and automated availability of information whilst reducing operational and maintenance costs,” explained Dr. Riyadh Najm, Deputy Minister for Engineering Affairs, MOCI.
“We wanted to protect our media assets from loss due to natural disasters or wear and tear of tapes, to repurpose our media assets throughout the broadcast content lifecycle and to enhance our broadcast services through automated, continuous and faster access to information. We chose EMC’s solutions as they met the high and demanding requirements that we have for continuous, reliable availability and disaster recovery,” Dr. Najm continued.
“Fast and ongoing accessibility of information is critical in the complex world of broadcast where data is constantly growing at an exponential rate,” explained Habib Mahakian, Telco, Media & Entertainment Director, Middle East & North West Africa, EMC. “The Ministry required a scalable and comprehensive solution to manage and protect their digital information assets. What we have deployed for the MOCI is a high-quality networked storage solution that will provide the Ministry with the flexibility to grow with the growth of their information. We are really proud to work with the Ministry and be part of this major transformation of the Saudi TV & Radio”
EMC installed a fully-scalable, interoperable infrastructure comprising of an industry leading EMC CLARiiON® networked storage system, an EMC Celerra® unified storage system, and EMC Connectrix® switches and directors that will manage more than 700 terabytes of data at two sites in the Kingdom. EMC provides the Ministry with a fully digital solution to manage both their historical and new media assets and will enable real-time collaboration in multiple-asset types with multiple broadcast formats.
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