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Challenges
- Managing the complexities between WWE’s owned and unowned environments
- Ensuring dependable data transmission between diverse infrastructures
- Addressing potential site downtimes that could be highly disruptive
Outcomes
- Improved Network Resilience
Enhanced ability to monitor and maintain network resilience across both owned and unowned infrastructures, preventing potential broadcast disruptions - Strengthened Collaboration
Fostered better collaboration between corporate IT, broadcast engineering, and road teams, leading to more efficient operations - Enhanced ISP Partnerships
Strengthened relationships with ISPs through detailed network issue snapshots, improving the speed and accuracy of resolving Internet-related problems
Exploring the Digital World of WWE
Get to know WWE, a leader in creating and delivering unforgettable sports entertainment and multimedia content globally.
Challenge
WWE reaches a global audience of more than one billion users by consistently delivering engaging and reliable content across television, social media, and video-on-demand platforms. Operating year-round, WWE hosts spectacular events around the world, complete with swings, kicks, and all the theatrics of professional wrestling.
To support their global operations, WWE uses state-of-the-art production trucks that seamlessly integrate into each venue’s technical infrastructure. These mobile units enable live broadcasting and event recording and rely heavily on uninterrupted network and Internet connectivity. This system allows for the transmission of large amounts of data, including live video and audio feeds, to television networks and streaming services. As a result, fans worldwide can enjoy WWE events in real-time.
One of WWE’s significant challenges is managing the complexities between their owned environments, such as TV facilities and corporate offices, and unowned environments like Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and those that involve shared resources with partners. As Ralph Riley, Director of Broadcast IT Systems for WWE, explains, "Unowned environments include the infrastructure we must liaise with to ensure our [production] trucks operate efficiently on the road. This involves communicating with the personnel managing these environments and ensuring their infrastructure and network architecture are operational, especially during show times."
Assuring dependable data transmission between these infrastructures is crucial for maintaining WWE’s loyal fan base, who expect high-quality, uninterrupted access to content. Reflecting on the potential impact of technical issues, Riley notes, “If a site [where we were filming] went down, it would be catastrophic for WWE and the production team.”
This emphasis on reliability extends to WWE’s digital supply chain, which starts with content production at global arenas and continues with processing the footage at its facility in Stamford, Connecticut. Prior to embracing ThousandEyes, network issues required manual troubleshooting through command-line configurations, which was time-consuming. This inefficiency underscored the urgent need for a more streamlined solution to uphold WWE’s high standards of content delivery.
Solution
Faced with the recurring challenge of delivering seamless broadcasts to a global audience, WWE turned to ThousandEyes for a robust Assurance solution. They strategically deployed Enterprise Agents at their headquarters and on traveling production trucks, enabling both resilience and broad visibility. Customized views and dashboards allowed WWE to keep a watchful eye on both owned and unowned infrastructure, such as ISPs and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), spotting potential issues before they could interrupt the action-packed broadcasts fans love.
ThousandEyes quickly became a vital part of WWE’s IT operations, bridging the gaps between corporate IT, broadcast engineering, and road teams. As Riley puts it, “ThousandEyes has been instrumental in enhancing the assurance of our digital supply chain by overlaying our network infrastructure and ensuring reliable content transmission within our systems and to our global partners. The tests we set up and monitor through our dashboards have been very efficient, helping us quickly identify latency, loss, and jitter issues. This allows us to take corrective actions and ensure reliability across the stream.”
Beyond internal operations, WWE harnessed ThousandEyes to build stronger partnerships with ISPs. By sharing detailed snapshots of network issues, they significantly improved the speed and accuracy of resolving Internet-related problems. This collaborative effort ensures that as WWE debuts live content like Monday Night Raw on Netflix and Peacock, the network connections remain rock-solid.
With ThousandEyes, WWE can detect network anomalies early, significantly reducing the Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and helping to mitigate the impacts of outages on the organization. The ThousandEyes platform has not only improved MTTR but has also enhanced visibility and collaboration, strengthening WWE’s network infrastructure and helping to ensure high-quality content delivery for global audiences.
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