The paper published last year was the first step towards sharing the BBC's technology direction and ambitions. Publishing detail about what we hope to achieve, we believe, will lead to much more fruitful conversations with our technology partners and suppliers over the coming years. Innovation needs to be at the heart of what we do in the BBC and that means harnessing good ideas that are generated both internally and from our partners.

The technology strategy describes the BBC's intent to leverage technologies such as virtualisation, cloud and consumer technologies but the next step was to translate those ambitions into specific areas of technology to start achieving them. We identified 35 different areas of technology and set out to create an individual roadmap or strategy for each. The roadmaps cover all major areas from core infrastructure such as networks and data centres through to content production technology and audience facing such as Red Button and online search.

The roadmaps are being used as a guide to inform the technology decisions that are made throughout the corporation and as a way to align all the projects into the same direction. They are not a commitment to spend and are not linked to the organisational changes and cuts the BBC has committed to make. However, the BBC has to invest in these technologies to remain efficient and meet our targets such as the reduction in overheads to be no more than 10% of public service budget.

What's been really interesting is the movement in technology over the past year and how important it is to make sure that the strategies are regularly reviewed. For example, we expected consumerisation to have a big impact and it hasn't disappointed. The iPad has changed the way a lot of people want to work and people with their privately owned devices want to be able to use it in the workplace as much as at home, with all the extra IT security considerations this brings.

The growth of online consumer services and the capabilities we take for granted as a home user are now being expected within the enterprise too. Central storage for our documents which is accessible anywhere, multi device support for our smart phone, tablet, PC and fast connection speeds are all enjoyed at home so why not at the office?

The nature of production and broadcasting lends itself to working outside the normal office environment and so identifying the tools and services that can bridge the consumer and enterprise space presents a real opportunity.

There are no doubt going to be even more new consumer services and rival tablet devices coming through this year and corporations have a difficult balancing act between supporting consumer devices and maintaining effective data management, IT security and resilience.

An observation that came from developing the strategies is the importance of enterprise architecture. The BBC is at a tipping point where integration is the focus for both our content production and our enterprise systems. Integration will enable the BBC to deliver efficiencies and better ways of working but it's not trivial to deliver. For the BBC to achieve its goals the role of architectural frameworks, interoperability standards (such as minimal metadata standards) and shared services are vital.

Attached to this blog is a summary of all the individual strategy roadmaps. It should provide you with a view of where the BBC would like to focus its efforts across each area of technology. Achieving many of these ambitions is dependant on the relationship the BBC has with technology partners and the innovation and creativity that exists in the market.

I hope you find them interesting.

Click here for a PowerPoint of the BBC's technology strategy as of March 2011

Update: 6 p.m. Click here for a PDF of the BBC's technology strategy as of March 2011.

Spencer Piggott is Head of Technology Direction, BBC Technology

B&ETG is responsible for the technology backbone of the organisation, from desktop PCs and tapeless production to camera procurement and much, much more.

Today we have published a new document (see PDF below) which will outline the direction for technology activities within the corporation for the next two to five years.

The world has changed and technology is increasingly at the fore of everything the corporation does. There has been a fundamental shift in the pace of change of both business (think cloud computing) and consumer technologies (iPhone/notebooks); alongside this of course there has been a massive change in audience behaviour in line with these developments.

The fact is we can't rest on our laurels; this new direction is a response to these internal and external demands on the BBC. The shift to fully tapeless content production, file based transfer for media and the production and delivery of High Definition all put greater pressure and emphasis on technology. With growing demand we can see that we need to make efficient considered investments now to build an agile platform for the BBC's technology activities over the coming years.

What's also been interesting is that we've been seeing convergence between our traditional enterprise technologies such as backend office and business systems and the new media solutions. For example the success of BBC iPlayer has meant the systems it's built on have needed to become much more robust and adopt the scalability and reliability principles of the business enterprise solutions. Conversely, the back office solutions have needed to become more open and modular as they are now playing an increasingly important role in providing data for some of the BBC's audience facing services.

These different drivers have culminated into an approach which focuses on four key areas which are:

The core building blocks - Ensuring the BBC has sustainable networking, telephony, storage and other core services which are needed to support the growing demand across the BBC.

Being connected and collaborative - Breaking down the technology barriers to allow our partners to easily work with the BBC and support for flexible and remote working.

Fostering Innovation - Embracing the growing capabilities of consumer devices for professional use and ensuring that innovative technology is able to be developed and grown within the BBC.

Delivering Value - Minimising customisation across technology, driving standardisation and use of commercial off the shelf products as much as possible.

These focus areas are underpinned by a set of principles which will guide technology decisions in the BBC from now on and represent the first step to developing a fully detailed approach for the BBC. For example some of the key principles describe the need to drive standardisation of technology so that it simplifies our ways of working and also on the ability to use appropriate consumer technologies in the workplace.

Over the coming weeks we're developing a set of individual technology roadmaps which will respond to these focus areas. These will outline specific goals and approaches for all aspects of technology from networks, storage and core infrastructure to IPTV, mobile and other audience facing technology.

I'll keep adding to this blog over the coming weeks with more detail as it comes in. In the meantime, take a look at the PDF document below.

The BBC has an obligation to make sure it stays in touch with the growing demands of the licence payer. At the end of the day the BBC is here to inform, educate and entertain and technology is playing a more and more important role in maintaining this purpose.

Spencer Piggott is Head of Technology Direction, B&EGT, BBC FM&T

• Download the BBC Technology Strategy document (PDF): TechnologyStrategyPublicMaster250110.pdf (Ed's note: This is an updated version of the document to correct a typo. No other changes have been made. PM)
]]> Spencer Piggott Spencer Piggott https://bbcstreaming.pages.dev/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/01/bbc_technology_strategy_princi.html https://bbcstreaming.pages.dev/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/01/bbc_technology_strategy_princi.html BBC Online Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:00:48 +0000