Project overview

The upgraded solution introduced a sleek mobile-ready UI, rich content- and media-management functionality, a custom advertising module, and an array of sophisticated features including video recommendation, advanced search, and more.

Client: Vodafone is a leading European telecom with more than 470 million mobile and 9.8 million TV customers. The company provides a wide range of communication services including mobile, digital TV, fixed broadband and landline calls, mobile money, cloud, and hosting.

Delivery Model
SLA-driven task backlog delivery (TM-based)
Domain
Online Video, Content management, AdTech
Effort and Duration
10 months, 72 man-months
Technologies
PHP, Zend framework, DHTML, Ajax, Smooth Streamin, PlayReady DRM, CouchDB

Business challenge

A regional office of a leading European telco made a strategic decision to redesign their web-based VoD service. Many of the platform’s features needed improvement, particularly in terms of media asset management and advertising capabilities.

In addition, the existing frontend was resource-intensive and imposed unreasonably high bandwidth requirements. The mobile UI was too rudimentary and functionally lacking to live up to the users’ expectations, so the client was running the risk of losing market share.

A proven track record of architecturally complex video streaming projects showcased Oxagile as a knowledgeable vendor and a perfect candidate to handle the project’s challenges.

Project process

As a large business with rigorously defined processes, the client placed emphasis on strict vendor and budget accountability, prompting Oxagile to follow the classic waterfall approach.

Requirements analysis and system design took three months to complete. Oxagile’s business analyst and systems architect authored a comprehensive set of project documentation, which was validated with the client to ensure the final product would meet all the captured requirements.

To tackle the frontend and backend workload in the following seven months, Oxagile brought together a well-balanced development team, including a project manager, six Zend-certified PHP developers, and three QA and testing engineers.

Solution

The resulting product was a competitive, user-focused VoD platform that became the key driver of the client’s on-demand entertainment strategy.

Oxagile was responsible for replacing the system’s frontend and video player, building custom frontend rendering functionality from the ground up, as well as significantly extending the backend features.

To ensure minimal buffering and fast start-up time for viewers, the new video player relied on Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming technology that adapts the stream according to available bandwidth and CPU conditions.

The team used PlayReady DRM to ensure the highest level of content security for various content consumption types and subscription options.

The new solution’s refined UI better targeted mobile users and provided equally compelling user experience on desktop and mobile.

Key features and highlights
  • Powerful content and media management functionality
  • A custom advertising module
  • A video recommendation feature
  • Advanced search capabilities
  • Variable skins
  • Social features (ratings, comments, social integration)
  • Tag cloud navigation
System Security

Protecting media content, as well as user transactions and data was pivotal to the solution’s success. Therefore Oxagile took special care to adhere to the industry’s best security practices throughout the project.

These included designing a secure architecture, implementing top-grade authentication and session security, and extensive security testing prior to delivery. Frequent vulnerability checks allowed the engineers to eliminate many security threats, including SQL injections, XSS exploits, and others.

Project results

By partnering with Oxagile, Vodafone was able to deliver a complex, feature-rich VoD platform on time and on budget. The new system excelled in terms of video delivery and management capabilities, content security, and advertising features, while sporting a polished, mobile-friendly UI that actively engaged users.

As scheduled, the new platform went live ten months after the project start. The solution received great user reviews and allowed the client to dramatically increase market reach in the VoD segment.