ITV: Service Oriented Architecture

Accenture helped ITV create a new technology road map that leveraged the potential of service-oriented architecture (SOA) fully, helping the company to become more flexible and effective on the journey toward high performance.

For more than 50 years, ITV has remained the United Kingdom's largest and most popular commercial broadcaster. Today ITV plc—formed in early 2004 through the merger of Granada and Carlton—is a multichannel, multiplatform, content-driven media company, firmly focused on the needs of viewers and advertisers.

As well as owning all the regional Channel 3 licences in England and Wales, ITV plc also has several fast-growing free-to-air digital channels. ITV plc's other operations include the United Kingdom's largest commercial production company, world-leading production and distribution businesses, a major regional news division and the leading cinema screen advertising business in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

"Everyone is talking about SOA. At ITV we have started to use SOA to deliver real benefits to the business." －Richard Cross, Technology Director

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To stay ahead and grow revenues in the dynamic marketplaces in which it operates, ITV needs fast and accurate decision-making based on seamless access to business information and operational data across all areas of the organization. Of equal importance, the company needs to constantly reduce its cost base and improve time to market.

All these objectives require a strong bridge between the business and the technology supporting it. In 2005, ITV plc's management decided to strengthen this linkage by aligning the group's business and technology more closely. The existing technology department was structured around four key divisions: broadcast, production, consumer and shared services.

Whilst each of these divisions was closely aligned to the business units it served, they were well-positioned to support end-to-end processes or solutions, with human intervention being required to share data across divisions. The company engaged Accenture to help it define a single enterprise architecture across all of its technology divisions, enabling it to drive greater re-use, better integrate its systems and enjoy shorter timescales for technology delivery.

Working against tight deadlines, the Accenture project team started work in August 2006 on an Enterprise Architecture Planning study across ITV.

In the first phase, the team examined and assessed the current technology systems across ITV's key operations. The main findings pointed to the need to fully exploit existing IT assets and different application technologies, and therefore an enterprise-level standards-based approach was required. Phase two involved building a clear picture of ITV's key business and technology drivers through a series of interviews with key business and technology stakeholders.

Accenture then set out clearly how these could be reflected in the "to-be" future technology architecture. In both ITV and Accenture's view, integration and process orchestration were key enablers for the new architecture, so the team proposed that a service-oriented architecture should be used to integrate the business and technology systems in a way that would put the road map into effect while minimizing the need for investment in systems replacement. For example, SOA enables a composite application to allow different parts of the business to access the same legacy system and data via a Web browser to meet their own specific needs.

The Accenture team conducted a proof of concept (PoC) in two phases, a Technical PoC and a Functional PoC. At relevant points in the PoC process, the Accenture client team called in SOA specialists from across its global network to provide input and expertise. While building the PoC the Accenture team also worked with Oracle, both to validate the technology standards set out in the initial enterprise architecture work, and to demonstrate the concept and value of SOA to the business.

"SOA will provide greater flexibility around our technology systems, allowing us to integrate better with third parties and bring new offers to market faster than our competition" －Richard Cross, Technology Director

As a result of the project, ITV has revised its direction and road maps for the key strategic technology areas it needs to build over the next few years.

These road maps include an SOA-based technology architecture that will enable ITV to realize the full benefits of its evolving strategy, while also driving greater flexibility, end-to-end integration and informed decision making. With the next step being to prove the value of SOA for a specific area of the business, ITV is proceeding with the execution of the Accenture Technology Blueprint.

Accenture's SOA methodology will further benefit ITV by opening up new and improved opportunities for ITV to partner with third-parties and alliances across the media and technology industries. Over time, SOA will shorten time-to-market and reduce operating expenditure by driving standardization across the business and improving re-use of existing technology components and services. All this means that ITV can realize more value from its existing legacy application. Accenture has provided skilled architects and SOA practitioners to help accelerate ITV's SOA journey.

"Accenture has provided skilled architects and SOA practitioners to help accelerate ITV's SOA journey" －Aidan Gray, Controller of Technology Planning & Governance