SpringOne Platform 2016 Speaker: Amar Sharma; Director, Engineering, NBCU No one can predict the direction of the television industry or the ephemeral whims of the consumer. However, any corporation seeking to survive in the ever changing media industry must have the technical capability to be immediately responsive to the needs of the business. As the convergence of linear and digital advertising has reshaped the industry, NBC Universal evolved to a CI/CD methodology and became extremely disciplined in the way that product is formulated, prototyped, and iterated upon. Find out more about how their microservices infrastructure and the new way they approach software development has equipped them to make better, data-driven decisions about their product investment.

1. How Code was Meant to be Written:
NBCU Develops the Critical Need
for Technical Agility in Media and
Entertainment
By Amar Sharma

2. // BACKGROUND & INDUSTRY CONTEXT

3. 3
CONNECTED TV
Internet-enabled TV and apps
Roku, Hulu, Amazon Prime, AppleTV
BROADCAST TV
Over the air broadcast and broadcast networks
ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW
CABLE NETWORK TV
Linear cable TV content
Discovery Network, ESPN, A&E
VIDEO ON DEMAND
Via TV or Web
Xfinity Video on Demand, DIRECTV on Demand
FULL EPISODE PLAYER
Via Web
ABC.com, ESPN.com, AMC.com
TV EVERYWHERE
Via Web
HBO GO, Xfinity TV Go, DIRECTV Everywhere
What does “TV” actually mean?

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6. NBCU Ad Sales by the Numbers
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# Commercials Scheduled
Over 5M commercials scheduled
for 2015 across all properties
$ Revenue
The system will manage over
$11B in revenue for 2015
* System Opportunities
Build custom systems to help the
transactional, analytical reporting
areas. Further invest in
technology to enable Productivity,

7. The multi-screen world
7
Even though cross screen planning is difficult because buying systems are disparate
today, we should be prepared from a technology & workflow perspective to turn the
capability on when buying converges at advertisers / agencies.

9. 9
LEARNING FROM LEADING PLATFORMS
Technology
Built almost all technology for content, commerce and
advertising in-house. They embrace technology. Allows for
quick iteration, better business aligment, agility and control
over IP. All of them have invested in self-service programs
which makes the time from buying to campaign launch short
and efficient.
Data
Have significant user registration / identity data across screens.
None of them let the data leave their firewalls as it provides
competitive advantage. Massive implementations of machine
learning to inform predictive models. Deploy experimentation
and work with large unstructred data sets. These companies
invented “Big Data”.
People
Invest heavily in engineering, mathematics and data sciences.
Their research and analytics teams have advanced SQL skills
and experience in machine learning using “Big Data”.
Go-To-Market
Building relationships with advertisers directly. In many cases,
agencies are dis-intermediated as they do not provide much
value in the equation. This works well with the rising trend of
advertisers building in-house DSP / DMP capability. Lastly,
content distribution models are changing fast which is why
their software services oriented architecture allows them to
accommodate those business decisions (because software is
often part of the disruption.
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3
4
Thoughtstarters
• Are we investing in and aquiring talent to match these leading companies? How do we start shifting our teams to think about unstructured, imperfect data to make decisions?
• How do we build more in-house versus outsourcing? How are we going to create IP if all development is outsourced?
• Are we building strong client-direct relationships? Do agencies matter?
• Do we have the right products, data? How do we get more of our own first party data?
Product
Almost all of them are working on demonstrating ROI, i.e.
sales lift to the target audience. They have already moved
beyond reach & frequency. They also provide holistic
campaign management across screens.
5

10. Every company Needs to Build Great Software

11. // NEW APPROACH – PARADIGM – REUSABLE
FRAMEWORK

12. diversity
of data
growing
volume of use
cases &
iterations
growing
volume &
velocity of
data sources

13. Individuals and interactions over processes
and tools
Working software over comprehensive
documentation
Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Core Principles

14. NBCU’s Software Approach
design first
rapid
prototyping
agile / cross-
functional
micro-
components
“full-stack”

15. Technology agnostic means continually sandboxing
new tech
Lean user-centric design drives simplistic, intuitive
experiences
Continuous development/integration allows for tighter
feedback, and faster failure
Non Dogmatic Guidelines
Test Driven Development enables confident commits
Analytics provide insights into what’s working and what’s not
Paired or peer reviewed code provides additional oversight

16. Roles Developer
UX Engineer
Product/ Project
Owner
QA
Technical Product
Manager
User
Devops

18. Good infinite loops…TDD && CI/CD

19. Scalable
platform &
network
Sensible
decoupling
Mature
DevOps
Client
partnership
Continue to Iterate

20. 20

21. 21

22. On Air
iFrame
Compare Carmine
Client
Performanc
e
CIReporting/
Welcome
Screen
Tableau
Mobile
Agency
Portal DMT
SMS/RMX
PAM RMX ATP
Service Layer: Data Maker
Logical Data Mart
CDW
iFrame
MSTR
Siteminder/SAML 2.0
Application
Tier
Reporting
Tier
Data Tier
Data
Abstraction
Tier
Operational
Dashboard
API Gateway
GripIT/Rovi Pro M Media Vu VCD/PPRS Nielsen SalesForce TVROCS Playlist/
AsRun
SAP REACT/
OWL
Compass
EAI
Current Architecture

23. DMTCP RMX TAD
On Air
Data Mart/Lake/Data Warehouse
Sales unit
Services
Data Maker
Data
Stores
ATPPAM
Logical data
Mart/
Lake/
Data
Warehouse
Client
Tier
Inventory
Services
Plan
Services
Rate card
Services
Log
Services
Event
Services
Reference
Data
Services
Factors
Services
ETL
API Gateway/Abstraction Layer
Microservices Architecture

24. Key Takeaways
• Everything is iterative, not just development
• Flexibility
• Quality
• Continued teaching & learning
• Sustainable pace
• Efficiency & Reuse
• Talent
• Technology and community

25. • Event storming
• Micro-services & micro-
components
• Design-first approaches
• Data pipelines
• App computing & marketplaces
• Cloud-first (state of mind)
• Immutable infrastructures
Going forward