Why is scalability so important to ESPN? Why does ESPN store personal informatio

Question

Why is scalability so important to ESPN? Why does ESPN store personal information and preferences on its databases and how does this personal information complicate the ability of ESPN to respond to requests from users?

ESPN is a global cable television network and media company with headquarters in Bristol,
Connecticut. Founded in 1979, ESPN grew along with the cable television industry to become
a mainstay of American popular culture. After a series of investments by Hearst Publications
and ABC (the American Broadcasting Network), 80% of ESPN finally ended up in the hands
of entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company, and 20% with the Hearst Corporation, a
100-year-old media company based largely on newspaper and magazine businesses. ESPN
focuses on sports programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk
shows, and other original programming. While originally a cable television network, ESPN has
since expanded aggressively to the Internet as well as radio and print magazines. ESPN is actually a family of sports networks and individual shows. There are eight 24-hour
domestic television sports networks: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes (a
Spanish language network), ESPNU (a network devoted to college sports), and the regionally
focused Longhorn Network (a network dedicated to The University of Texas athletics) and
SEC Network (focused on Southeastern Athletic Conference sports). ESPN also operates five
high-definition television simulcast services: ESPN HD, ESPN2 HD, ESPNEWS HD, ESPNU HD,
and ESPN Deportes HD. ESPN programs the sports schedule on the ABC Television Network,
which is branded ESPN on ABC. ESPN International has ownership interests in 24 television
networks that reach households in 61 countries and territories across seven continents. In
addition to its media outlets, ESPN is well-known for its ownership of the rights to various
professional and college sports programming.
On the Internet, ESPN owns ESPN.com, which delivers comprehensive sports programming,
news, information, and video. ESPN3 is a broadband service that delivers thousands of live
events. Other sites include WatchESPN, ESPNRadio, ESPNDeportes, ESPNFC, ESPNCricinfo,
ESPNScrum, ESPNFL, and a variety of market-specific sites. ESPN also owns the statisticallyfocused
political and sports site FiveThirtyEight.
In 2016, ESPN digital properties averaged approximately 80 million U.S. users per month
who watched 7.0 billion minutes of content. In terms of reach, ESPN lead the Sports
category, generating over 15% of all Sports category usage for the year and 55 percent more
than its closest competitor. ESPN is also the industry leader in terms of unique visitors to,
and minutes watched on, its mobile Web site and mobile apps, boasting the top two sports apps in its flagship ESPN app and WatchESPN digital streaming app.

With over 110 million unique global online visitors, ESPN receives an avalanche of requests
for information services every second of every day. ESPN needs to keep track of each visitor’s
personal interests and profile in order to provide those services. To cope with this highly
interactive environment, ESPN adopted an IBM technology called WebSphere® eXtreme
Scale. eXtreme Scale is a set of software and hardware tools that rely on distributed cache
memory as opposed to hard disk drives to access data. Combining the processing power
of 20 or more server computers into a single environment called a “grid,” makes it possible
for ESPN to process very large volumes of transactions (requests for service) in single millisecond
time frames. In addition, the system is highly flexible and can be scaled up or down
depending on the demand for services.
ESPN has also had to change core programming elements such as SportsCenter to fit
the new digitally-dominated landscape. ESPN’s new SportsCenter set has 114 monitors
compared to the older one’s 15, nearly 10,000 square feet of space, 1,100 miles of fiber optic
cable, and the ability to accommodate emerging technologies that may arise. The trouble
for ESPN is that even the most cutting-edge TV studio may not be enough to draw viewers,
and the most comprehensive network of national and regional sports networks may no
longer be ESPN’s greatest strength. More users are accessing ESPN content via mobile devices at the expense of TV, and services that allow users to avoid traditional cable packages
that contain ESPN are proliferating. Typical sports fans are now interested in fantasy
football and getting their sports news the instant it happens, not hours later.
Still, ESPN has committed itself to embracing change, and maintains a dominant presence
on mobile. Its media personalities are all extremely active on Twitter. If users should become
interested in 3D technology, virtual reality, or something totally unforeseen, ESPN hopes
that it’s taken the necessary steps to be at the cutting edge for years to come.

Explanation / Answer

Scalability is very important because When they scale their administrations, they can give a quick reaction to every one of it clients. So how would they do that? Well the framework depends on 10 physical servers. Every one of them has a 32-gigabyte RAM. You can powerfully at run-time turn servers down and you can turn servers up when you require them. So, they can change the measure of servers at the measure of solicitations.

They don't simply need personalization, yet they likewise need single sign on. They won't to have your inclination convey forward to your iPhone, different gadgets or on whatever other sites that they possess.

This individual data confuses the capacity of ESPN to react to demands from clients because ESPN needs to reply to a client in one millisecond reaction time. Be that as it may, here they don't just need to reply to one client, however they need to reply to thousands of all in the meantime. Other than that, it additionally must have the capacity to "talk" to the right administration and reaction back to the client in that millisecond of reaction time.

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