The Telegraph (UK) and Baobab Suite share mobile journey lessons
•
1 like•629 views
Telegraph Media Group (UK) and Baobab Suite share mobile journey challenges and lessons learned. This presentation was first shared with an audience at Global Editors Network in Paris June 2013. Together TMG (UK) and Afrozaar embarked on building an enterprise publishing platform for mobile and social news feed aggregators that could provide flexibility and means to experiment with certain content publishing features. There was a main focus around native mobile app metering, entitlement, template layouts, push notifications to user segments according to device and app platforms being used.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (16)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to The Telegraph (UK) and Baobab Suite share mobile journey lessons
Similar to The Telegraph (UK) and Baobab Suite share mobile journey lessons (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (10)
The Telegraph (UK) and Baobab Suite share mobile journey lessons
- 1. “Nurturing a sustainable mobile news app ecosystem”
- 8. Mark Brincat Head of Architecture at Telegraph Media Group Strategic Technology Solutions
- 9. • Transformed into a successful commercial cutting edge multi-media business. • One of Europe’s Leading News Organisation • Undergone a Technological, Commercial and Editorial Revolution.
- 11. “Nurturing a sustainable mobile news app ecosystem”
- 12. The Challenges • Eliminate the haste and operational obstacles around mobile app delivery • Ensure freedom to change and flexibility around app development features and partners • Adopt a mobile architecture that allows experimentation and rolls out changes quickly
- 13. • Challenge #1 Eliminate the haste and operational obstacles around mobile app delivery • Key areas • Improve speed and automate the content import and mobile publishing cycle • Enable faster integration with existing back-office systems • Reduce required mobile operational and support personnel • Challenge #2: Ensure freedom to change and flexibility around app development partners • Challenge #3: Adopt a mobile architecture that allows experimentation and roll’s out changes quickly
- 14. • Challenge #1 Eliminate the haste and operational obstacles around mobile app delivery HOW WAS THIS ACHIEVED ? • Implementation of multiple content Injestors and established reliable system integration points • Optimize data processing of content • Previewing of next edition on actual live app/device
- 15. • Challenge #2 Ensure freedom to change and flexibility around app development partners • Key areas • Mitigate the risk of mobile app development team lock-in • Perform majority of configuration at server side across all apps • Introduce software development kits for extensive collaboration with other partners • Challenge #1: Eliminate the haste and operational obstacles around mobile app delivery • Challenge #3: Adopt a mobile architecture that allows experimentation and roll’s out changes quickly
- 16. • Challenge #2 Ensure freedom to change and flexibility around app development partners HOW WAS THIS ACHIEVED? • Provision of native mobile app SDKs that are tightly coupled with the Baobab Suite server • Baobab Suite’s app SDKs enforce integration service standards and ways of interacting with Baobab server • TMG can now make server side configuration changes and choose to roll them out mostly at a per title/edition/platform level
- 17. • Challenge #3 Adopt a mobile architecture that allows experimentation and rolls out changes quickly • Key areas • Need to test innovative app concepts cost effectively and in timely manner with minimal risk • Ability to roll out new layouts, metering rules at runtime and obtain user feedback quickly so as to minimize risk or maximize return • Challenge #1: Eliminate the haste and operational obstacles around mobile app delivery • Challenge #2: Ensure freedom to change and flexibility around app development partners
- 18. • Challenge #3 Adopt a NATIVE mobile app architecture that allows experimentation and rolls out changes quickly HOW THIS WILL BE ACHIEVED? • Ability to switch layout of front page - in case of major news event, with no native app redeployment • Introduce ability to switch templates of section pages • Introduce concept of metering and pay walling at runtime in accordance to platform, title, section and geographic location
- 20. Mobilizing content for discovery Systems Integration Content Packaging Back-office Systems CORE Server Content Redistribution Administration Operational Preview Development Tools White-label Apps Social & Syndicated Feeds
- 21. Please come and have a chat with us. We would like to hear about the challenges and successes you are experiencing
- 22. Questions
Editor's Notes
- ----- Meeting Notes (2013/06/17 10:14) -----MorningMasterclass intro - Baobab Product82g2Le atliers – 56euros b7yz
- Intros (3 mins) Rich, Dirk and Marco co-founders of Afrozaar.com– young dynamic and innovative software start-up out of Cape Town South Africa – we’ve recently turned 3
- -- Specialising in Native Mobile Apps and have pushed the HTML5 limits wrt offline storage and security-- Our apps are supported by a cloud services where we have experience deploying to public and private cloud based environments
- – Apps across across financial services, retail, tourism sectors and have found building and sustaining apps for the contentrichpublishing sector the most challenging – we enjoy challenges.-- Something that we are proud of is our first customer is also longest standing customer to date – MySubs (Media24 eCommerce brand), where we built Africa’s first digital newsstand subscription services across all app platforms (back in 2010 when it was a race to go mobile)
- How we got to where we are today – Standing in front of you today-- We believed in our unique cloud:mobile technology and knew we had great experience in mobile publishing -- We travelled north to the UK
- who have played a role in the establishment of our independent product “Baobab Suite”
- Baobab Suite is a specialized Mobile Backend as a Service platform for publishers wanting to distribute content in a sustainable way across mobile and social app platforms.Baobab Suite We have decided to focus on serving the media publishing industry, and looking to share our experiences through the rollout and enhancement of the Baobab Suite publishing platform.
- We are very proud and happy to have Baobab Suite customer/partner TMG (UK) representatives here with us.Mr. Allan Marshall (interim CIO at the Telegraph Media Group) where he has lead the restructuring of the Strategic Technology Solution division and the establishment of a long term strategic partnership with Baobab Suite team. Allan is one of the most tenacious, straight talking operators we’ve met.Mr. Mark Brincat (Head of Architecture) where he has been ensuring the design and architecture delivered is “fit for purpose” and that the technical building blocks are in place to achieve the business’s objectives with a focus on flexibility, robustness and performance.
- Old vs New apps summary – flexibility etcAny information or desire to share about the apps and app strategy is welcomedBaobab Suite will be redistributing content across all of these
- We will be using TMG as a case study Now their desired mobile journey is not unique, it is a story of a leading publisher’s thirst for innovation, risk taking, experimentation, failure and in the end mobile freedomWhat differentiates successful innovators is their ability to fail, change and rectify QUICKLY.
- - These are some Mobile Challenges (as a publisher) that TMG learned they need to overcome- We are NOW going to go into more detail around each one of these
- Implementation of multiple Content Injestors and established reliable system integration pointsEach data source has it’s own content injestor into Baobab SuiteWhich has it’s own data storage structure to resemble content hierarchy, user profiles, subscriptions, analytics, order transactions, adverts etc.This results in a write once and reuse approach across all platformsNow TMG can plan to import content from many more different data sources and have them mapped to relevant data models within Baobab Suite. The only question needed to know is the whether data should be pushed/pulled Baobab can handle either and what format is the data feed. Baobab Suite works with NITF/NewsML and some custom CMS formatsOptimized data processing of contentWith the Importation of TMG content from multiple sources was dramatically improved from almost 1hr to a few minutes. This is largely done by shift personnel and needs to be quick should anything go wrong. You all know how critical it is to get an edition out on timeTMG can now spend more time reviewing quality of content instead of being concerned with lead-time and delays due to technical process.Previewing of next edition on actual live app/deviceTMG don’t need to worry about test apps, or preview platformsThis helps TMG eradicate tech risk and also human error when juggling between app and content versions of daily editionsEditors can preview content on specific devices anytime, anywhere
- E.g. #1 3rd party app development teams only have to focus on front-end App design and development, they don’t need server side knowledge and team members. This speeds up and makes app development a lot cheaper to build and maintain going forwardIt also allows TMG to select multiple different app development partners on a per platform basis and run projects parallelE.g. #2. This means we reduce the number of app changes, builds, deployments, test cycles at each platform level and also eradicate the risk and unknown of app store approvals and lead time.Baobab Suite supports edition based, live feeds, and social feeds built on standard technology stack (RSS / JSON)TMG team can configure which sections are delivered to specific platforms
- Introduce these then hand over
- Baobab provides tools to test the waters in the market and gather relevant information to make the next best call on how to proceedE.g. Decide today that tomorrow front page must have only one image and a headline – the Armageddon edition and it should only be on tablet devicesThis Baobab does on server side----- Meeting Notes (2013/06/17 10:31) -----Ability to switch layout of front page - in case of major news event, with no app redploymentIntroduce ability to switch templates of section pagesIntroduce concept of metering
- TMG is a publisher that identified the need to adapt and change their approach in order to travel the journey to mobile app freedomThese are some of the goals set out to be achieved