As part of its strategy of appealing to users from India to the rest of the world, the ZEE5 digital entertainment service has revealed plans to use Microsoft as its cloud service partner to expand its platform on an international stage.
ZEE5 went live in 190+ markets worldwide in October 2018 offering audiences around the globe an integrated entertainment experience, with live TV and over 100,00 hours of on-demand programming including films, TV shows, music, and health and lifestyle videos along with a slate of originals across 12 languages. The live TV offering has over 60 channels.Through the continued partnership with the IT giant, ZEE5 will take its library of multi-genre and multi-language content — including news and entertainment across English, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi — to the world with Microsoft Azure.
ZEE5 uses a fully-managed Azure platform to perform infrastructure maintenance and load balancing. It has deployed Microsoft DevOps (VSTS), Microsoft Azure PAAS, DBAS, Azure Media Service (AMS), App Service (Linux, Windows), Access Control Services (ACS), Azure Container Registry (ACR) and Functions to reduce the burden on hardware and lower the maintenance of its services, while continuing to maintain agreed customer experience in a secure, compliant environment. Azure has also helped ZEE5 to accelerate containerised application development within stipulated timelines.
ZEE5 has found that with growing internet penetration around the world, very much including India, over-the-top (OTT) services are fast being adopted, not just in metro cities but in tier 2 and tier 3 cities as well. Azure is also seeing use helping app providers become more agile and scale rapidly on demand, in sync with the increase in customer base and app traffic.
Commenting on the new partnership, Amit Goenka, CEO of ZEE5 parent Zee International and Z5 Global, said: “Ensuring consistent performance for a seamless customer experience and security are of paramount importance to us, and we are extremely happy to partner with Microsoft for this. The elasticity and security they provide have been key to deploying our new service, and in building a more scalable platform.”
“We are very excited about this partnership with ZEE5,” added Sashi Sreedharan, managing director of Microsoft India. "The fast-increasing penetration of OTT services necessitates more efficient and secure ways to build scalable streaming solutions. Microsoft Azure services has not only enabled ZEE5 to expand their footprint globally, but it can accelerate seamless transition to personalised services in future. We are happy to partner with ZEE5 to cater to the entertainment demands of the global South Asian diaspora.”
