Get ready to rock! With an international audience of 200 million people, the Eurovision Song Contest is undisputedly one of the world’s biggest television entertainment events – and, as the official technology partner, Microsoft will be instrumental (ha… get it?!) in helping make this the best show yet!
Our cloud platform, Microsoft Azure, will provide the backbone of the enterprise-grade IT infrastructure: the production team will rely on Azure to create a video database for exchanging content with 45 partner broadcasters throughout the world and for the uninterrupted operation of a video on demand solution, ensuring fans don’t miss a single beat of the action. In addition, Azure will host the official Eurovision Song Contest app, which will keep fans from all over the world informed of the latest developments, and can transform a person’s mobile device into a screen with live updates throughout the show.
We’ve also gotten a backstage pass into all the action! To pull off such a massive event, the 800 international volunteers are critical, so Microsoft is equipping them with Lumia 535 smartphones and Yammer, so they can effectively communicate and collaborate before and during the show.
“At Microsoft, we are dedicated to helping people achieve more in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the alliance with the Eurovision Song Content allows us to beautifully illustrate what this means. With our mobile technology – including powerful, yet affordable, Lumia handsets coupled with apps like Yammer – even teams working internationally under tight deadlines can work seamlessly, anytime, anywhere. And, with our cloud, any organization can quickly scale to meet demand, even if it’s around one of the biggest international entertainment events of the year,” noted Microsoft Austria’s CEO Georg Obermeier.
Cue the music! And may the best act win!
