1. Background
Hillsong previously relied on a legacy network based on routers and
switches. With new and more demanding requirements presenting
themselves on a weekly basis, the church found it increasingly difficult to
adapt its ageing hardware to suit.
The traditional protocols struggled to deliver the flexibility required to scale,
therefore jeopardising the reliability of peak broadcasts for weekend
services. In many instances, the technology collapsed under Hillsong’s
demands, triggering failures and dropouts for multiple campuses across
Australia.
With the ever-increasing requirement for sufficient network capacity to
deliver multi-gigabits of broadcast grade HD video across all its primary
campuses, Hillsong undertook an evaluation of a new, standards-based
CHALLENGES
Hillsong’s legacy network was
unreliable and inflexible, unable to deliver
sufficient performance to meet the demand of the
dynamic church. Following numerous outages
and dropouts, Hillsong explored a new way to
improve the experience it delivers to 45,000
people every week.
Value Created:
- The church’s network is now fully virtualised.
Virtualisation enables the reliable delivery of
highly-secure digital services, including
broadcasts, video surveillance, IP telephony
and administration systems, & carrier grade
feature sets, such as providing transit services
for its own internet backbone.
- Hillsong is now able to move at ‘business
speed’. Changes to and additions of services
in the network can be performed through quick
provisioning without interrupting day-to-day
operations.
- With SDN Fx, Hillsong can support its dynamic
expansion by extending its network to cater for
its unique experiences so that services perform
as required and without interruption.
AGC and Avaya connect Hillsong
church members across the country
Accelerating Business Case Study | Technology | IT Infrastructure
Hillsong is a Pentecostal church based in Baulkham Hills,
Sydney. With over 25 Australian sites, the church conducts
services, events, conferences and activities for more than
45,000 members each weekend. AGC Networks
implemented Avaya SDN Fx Network architecture to enable
its nationwide campuses to deliver high quality services to
all major locations.
2. 2
Accelerating Business Case Study | Technology | IT Infrastructure
“The Avaya technology has allowed us to create a
network around our Baulkham Hills campus in the
north-west & extends the core into our two locations
plus data centre in the City of Sydney. This creates
the "ring" – which makes up our core – and use
carrier provided layer two circuits to expand to our
other sites, whether they’re in Newcastle, Brisbane,
or any of the 3 locations in Melbourne.”
Ricki Cook, Creative Technology,
Hillsong Church.
approach that would provide enough capacity, scalability, and reliability for
its multicast requirements. It needed a simple way to multicast high
definition (HD) video across its major locations.
Through their own research and workshops, and along with Avaya
Platinum Partner, AGC Networks, Hillsong selected Avaya SDN Fx as it
could provide a flexible core network that was easy to adapt and scale,
and support major changes at any time without interruptions.
Avaya SDN Fx has enabled Hillsong to create a network core that can
push multi-gigabits of data across its major locations, enhancing its reach
and eliminating performance issues.
According to Hillsong, the new network provides a level of flexibility the
church had never experienced before. For example, it can now set-up a
new IP-based multicast virtual network to support a temporary video feed
in minutes, rather than being forced to schedule broadcasts well ahead of
time.
No longer facing outages or disruptions, the church can share live, HD
video streams between all sites simultaneously so any campus can view
services at another location with thanks to advanced SDN automation by
simply pushing a button to select another sites source to the local sites
destination. This has allowed Hillsong to create interactive services
between multiple sites all at the same time.
With video on demand, there is no need for complex set-up procedures.
Members at the nation-wide locations can connect at any time without
being restricted by technology or geography.
Hillsong also have a requirement to securely partition the network based
on business role and function. With SDN Fx, new services-based
partitions can be created by simply associating an edge switch VLAN
with a network-wide service identifier number. The core and distribution
switches are untouched. This means new services can be turned up
quickly, with the guarantee that provisioning errors will not cause a
network outage during the change.
