Windows Azure

Customer Solution Case Study

Tribune Transforms Business for Heightened

Relevance by Embracing Cloud Computing

Overview Country or Region: United States

Industry: Media and entertainment

Customer Profile

The Chicago, Illinois–based Tribune

Company operates eight newspapers, 23

television stations, and a variety of news

and information websites. The company

employs approximately 14,000 people

across the United States.

Business Situation

The company wanted to rethink its

business operations to stay competitive

in a changing industry. It sought to offer

more relevant, compelling content to

consumers while cutting operating costs.

Solution

Tribune is consolidating its data centers

from 32 to two and creating a central

content repository to serve targeted

information and advertising to

consumers by embracing cloud

computing on the Windows Azure

platform.

Benefits

Fast, unlimited scalability

Greater productivity and ease

Reduced IT complexity

New revenue opportunities

Greater relevance with consumers

―Adopting Windows Azure helps us heighten our

relevance … in a scalable, cost-effective way. The pay-

as-you-go model is a lot less expensive than the $1.5

million annually that we would have spent.‖

Steve Gable, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Tribune Company

Tribune Company, a giant in the traditional media industry,

needed to adapt its business to thrive in a changing market.

Specifically, it wanted to make it possible for consumers to

choose the content most relevant to them. Tribune quickly

centralized the content in its many data centers into a single

repository using cloud computing on the Windows Azure

platform. Journalists and editors now have a single source for

submitting and retrieving content, and the company can provide

consumers with targeted content through online, mobile, and

traditional distribution methods. Furthermore, Tribune

experienced cost savings, a fast time-to-market, and a reduced

IT management burden with Windows Azure. The company

believes the platform‘s fully scalable nature to be critical in

expanding its revenue opportunities as it transforms how it

delivers news.

Situation Since 1847, the American public has relied

on the Tribune Company for news and

information. The company began as a one-

room publishing plant with a press run of

400 copies; today, Tribune is made up of

eight newspapers, 23 television stations,

and various related news and information

websites.

Throughout its history, Tribune has applied

technology with great imagination and

foresight, earning the company an

industry-wide reputation for innovation.

That tradition of innovation has never been

more important as the newspaper industry

faces declining revenue, a tough economy,

and the advent of new media applications

that vie for consumers‘ attention. ―We knew

that, in order to compete, we needed to

transform from a traditional media

company into an interactive media

company,‖ says Steve Gable, Executive Vice

President and Chief Technology Officer for

Tribune Company.

One of the barriers to that sort of

transformation was the company‘s

geographically dispersed technology

infrastructure. Tribune managed 32

separate data centers, with a total of 4,000

servers and 75,000 feet of raised-floor

space that is dedicated to supporting and

cooling those servers. It also maintained

2,000 software applications that were not

consistent from newspaper to newspaper

or television station to television station.

―With eight individual newspapers and a

‗silo‘ approach where we had data

dispersed all over the country, it was

difficult to share content among our

different organizations the way that we

wanted to,‖ says Denise Schuster, Senior

Vice President of Tribune Technology

Innovations. ―For instance, a Tribune

photographer could take a wonderful

photo, yet only one paper could efficiently

access and use it.‖

Tribune wanted to make its editorial and

advertising content readily available for all

its newspapers, television stations, and

websites to use. The company also sought

to expand the number of ways in which

customers and Tribune employees could

consume that content. ―We wanted to

switch from presenting the information that

we thought was relevant to offering more

targeted information that our readers deem

relevant,‖ says Gable. ―Additionally, we

could provide greater value for our

advertisers by ensuring that their ads are

being seen by the right customers, through

whatever means those customers prefer.‖

―The changes in technology and in

consumer taste are happening so rapidly

that we've got to be nimble and responsive

to the market's needs,‖ adds Mark Chase,

President of Tribune Interactive, a division

of Tribune Company. ―News is now coming

at people in so many different directions

that our challenge is to help them access,

personalize, and consume the information

so that it is relevant to them. In a perfect

world, we give them exactly what they

want, when they want it, which means that

we've got to be able to deliver it over

multiple channels.‖

2009 Statistics for Tribune Company

Newspapers 8

Television stations 23

Websites 50

Data centers 32

Servers 4,000

Amount of raised floor (ft.) 75,000

Software applications 2,000

Online traffic 6.1 billion page views

The first step toward achieving this new

role as an interactive media company was

to establish a standardized information-

sharing infrastructure for the entire

company. Yet Tribune quickly realized that

building the kind of internal infrastructure

necessary to support that role was not

achievable from a cost or management

perspective. ―We already had too many

data centers to manage and knew that we

needed to consolidate them,‖ says Jerry

Schulist, Solutions Architect for Tribune

Company. ―We produce about 100

gigabytes of editorial content a day and

about 8 terabytes at each of the 23

television stations every 6 to 12 months,

and we kept adding hard drives to store it

all. That‘s just not a sustainable model for a

company whose storage needs grow so

quickly.‖

Tribune also identified the importance of

quickly developing new media products

and capabilities. ―We wanted to be more

agile in terms of our ability to bring to

market new products, such as new

websites, but we were limited because of

the considerable coordination and effort

that it would take to set up the

infrastructure necessary for new projects,‖

says Gable.

Solution Tribune determined that it must reduce its

number of data centers and build a

centralized content repository with all its

editorial and advertising information. ―We

set out to create a repository to bring

together contextual advertising and

editorial content that could be used

throughout Tribune to deliver a more

compelling user experience,‖ says Gable.

―Staff needed to be able to search across all

content for greater efficiency and to push

content out through different distribution

methods.‖

The company explored its options and

decided that the best way to tackle its

consolidation project was through cloud

computing. ―We chose the cloud services

approach because it allows for reduced

time and flexibility in setting up

infrastructure, which means quicker

turnaround times for new products,‖ says

Gable.

After considering other solutions, such as

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3),

Tribune chose to develop its content

repository using the Windows Azure

platform, an Internet-scale, cloud platform-

as-a-service offering hosted in Microsoft

data centers. ―We have a significant

investment in employees who know the

Windows platform, so Windows Azure is an

obvious choice for us,‖ comments Gable.

―We don‘t have to retool or retrain our

developers and support staff because

developing for the Windows platform is

common knowledge for us.‖

The biggest challenge that Tribune faced in

moving its content to Windows Azure was

the sheer volume of data it had. ―We

currently have a capacity plan for

approximately 100 terabytes of content at

the end of the year, and that number does

not include videos, photos, our digital

archives, which go back to 1985 for print

publications, or our non-digital archives,

which trace back to the 1800s,‖ says

Schuster. ―So the possibilities are way out

there. I don‘t know how big the number is

going to get, but the best part of this

Tribune Company Data Quantities at Start of Project

Amount of editorial content produced

annually

100 terabytes

Amount of total content generated daily 100 gigabytes

Years of digitized historical content 25

Years of historical content to digitize 137

―We currently have a

capacity plan for

approximately 100

terabytes of content at

the end of the year, and

that number does not

include videos, photos,

our digital archives … I

don‘t know how big the

number‘s going to get,

but the best part of this

model is that we can

grow as we need to.‖

Denise Schuster, Senior Vice President, Tribune Technology Innovations

model is that we can grow as we need to.

And if we find we need more video, the

capacity is there, and we're ready to tap

into it.‖

Adds Gable, ―Just uploading our current

content is a huge job, but we want to

eventually add all that historical content to

the cloud repository, which could be

petabytes of data.‖

Solution Elements

Tribune decided to use several components

of the Windows Azure platform to support

its repository.

Storage

The company is using worker roles to

create as many as 15 thumbnail images of

each photo that it uploads and places in

Windows Azure Blob Storage, which stores

named files along with metadata for a file.

Tribune will use the multitude of

thumbnails for flexibility in using

photographs of varying sizes in different

media formats. ―We‘ve had between 10 and

20 instances running to handle the amount

of content that we‘re adding to the cloud

each day,‖ says Ryan McKenzie, Solutions

Architect for Tribune Company. ―We

anticipate that our number of worker roles

may grow over time and that we‘ll have no

trouble scaling to meet future demand.‖

The company also plans to use the

Windows Azure Content Delivery Network

for caching blobs on its edge networks.

―With our content stored in Windows

Azure, it makes a lot of sense to have a

unified solution and take advantage of the

cost-effective, scalable Windows Azure

Content Delivery Network capabilities,‖ says

McKenzie.

Search

To make its content fully searchable,

Tribune implemented Microsoft FAST

Search Server 2010 for Internet Business as

its priority search engine. ―We pulled all the

content together and created a set of

services that save the content locally,‖ says

McKenzie. ―Then a service picks it up,

distributes it to Windows Azure, and saves

the path to that file in the database. That

path is sent to FAST Search Server 2010,

which indexes the content, making it

readily searchable.‖

Layout

Tribune plans to use Windows Azure

compute capabilities to dynamically

generate newspaper-like layouts based on

a reader‘s selected content. Because of the

number of layouts possible based on the

various content types, the calculations

required to produce a layout can grow

exponentially. The company expects to use

Windows Azure worker roles and web roles

to handle that processing and reduce the

amount of time that it takes to run the

calculations. ―Plus, we‘ll be able to offload

that processing to Windows Azure, rather

Figure 1. Architectural diagram

illustrating the Tribune

Company content storage,

search, and retrieval solution.

than it taking up local resources,‖ says

Schulist.

Current State and Solution Vision

As of June 2010, Tribune is processing its

publication content and sending it to

Windows Azure. The company anticipates

that it will have all its non-historical

publications uploaded to the cloud

repository by June 2010, bringing all

current Tribune publications under a single,

searchable index.

Initially, the company will pull the content

stored in the cloud into internal systems,

such as its media publishing system and

website templates. In the future, Tribune

also will offer content consumption

through mobile devices. ―Having everything

in one spot with Windows Azure means

that we can make our content available to

our readers on the platform of their

choice—mobile, web, or traditional media,‖

says Schulist.

Benefits For Tribune, the move to cloud computing

with Windows Azure supports the drive

toward new, interactive media and the

ability to provide more relevant content to

readers, in whatever form they wish to

consume it.

―Tribune is a 150-plus-year-old business

that has had to transform from a traditional

media provider to an online, interactive

company. Adopting Windows Azure helps

us heighten our relevance with both

consumers and advertisers by creating

compelling solutions and new

opportunities in a scalable, cost-effective

way,‖ says Gable. ―The pay-as-you-go

model is a lot less expensive than the $1.5

million annually that we would have spent

on the infrastructure to handle all our

data.‖

Fast, Unlimited Scalability

Embracing Windows Azure cloud

computing means that Tribune now has the

ability to scale its infrastructure up or down,

according to demand. ―Putting new

infrastructure in place was not all that easy,

but we don‘t have to worry about that

anymore,‖ says Gable. ―Before, it took six

weeks to acquire and install hardware, load

the operating system, and start

development. Now, we‘re ready to go in

about a day and a half.‖

The infrastructure‘s scalable nature is

especially important given that Tribune

does not yet know the extent of its

resource needs. ―We don't know how big

our cloud infrastructure is going to get, but

the best part of Windows Azure is that we

can grow our model as we need to,‖ says

Schuster. ―If we find that we need more

resources, the capacity's there and we're

ready to tap into it.‖

Adds Schulist, ―We can spin up multiple

instances of an application just by changing

an integer. We can scale up our number of

worker roles to turn millions of photos into

thumbnail images, and then we can reduce

the number of instances when we‘re done.

And we can monitor queue lengths and

automatically scale up and back, as needed.

That sort of flexibility is huge for us.‖

Greater Productivity and Ease of Use

Developers in the company‘s Technology

department are so comfortable working

with the Microsoft .NET Framework that

minimal training was necessary for the

move to the Windows Azure platform. ―We

had a smooth transition to using Windows

Azure as a development environment,‖ says

Schulist. ―The development fabric and tools

provided by Microsoft are phenomenal. We

can develop locally, fully test the code, and

then push it out to Windows Azure quickly

and easily, which makes us more

―We‘ve had between 10

and 20 instances running

to handle the amount of

content that we‘re

adding to the cloud each

day. We anticipate that

our number of worker

roles may grow over

time and that we‘ll have

no trouble scaling to

meet future demand.‖

Ryan McKenzie, Solutions Architect,

Tribune Company

productive from a development

standpoint.‖

In fact, the Windows Azure local

development tools came in handy during

Schulist‘s travels. ―I was able to do a lot of

development on the airplane while flying

back and forth from Orlando to Chicago,‖

he remarks.

Adds Gable, ―If we‘d gone further down the

Amazon S3 path, we would have faced a lot

of retraining, because we don‘t have that

sort of in-house expertise. But we found

Windows Azure consistent and easy to

work with, given our current skill set and

infrastructure, which made for quick

adoption.‖

Greater employee productivity extends

beyond the Tribune Technology

department now that journalists and

editors have an easier way of finding and

using historical information. ―The whole

work environment is going to be

streamlined and efficient—a night-and-day

difference,‖ says McKenzie. ―Before, a writer

who was interested in background

information, previously written articles, or

historical events would have had to go

through eight different archive systems to

find it. With the centralized content

repository and unified index, Tribune staff

can run a search and find the content that

they need, whether that information was

published today or years ago.‖

Additionally, the company‘s content-

management standardization through

Windows Azure will make it easy for

Tribune to package its content by story and

provide its distribution channels with a

short-story version, long-story version, and

the photos and videos pertaining to that

story. ―We‘ll have one source for content,

one way to submit it, and one way to

retrieve it,‖ continues McKenzie. ―So it will

be extremely easy to find what you need,

write a piece, and publish it to different

media.‖

Another benefit to having a centralized

repository in the cloud is that journalists

can access it from anywhere. ―News doesn‘t

happen in the newsroom,‖ says Gable. ―The

benefit of having our content exposed

through cloud computing means that

journalists don‘t have to come back here

and work through traditional infrastructure

and applications. They can capture and

share information from wherever they are.‖

Reduced IT Complexity

Tribune appreciates the reduction in IT

complexity it is experiencing since its

adoption of Windows Azure. ―There‘s not a

lot of management to worry about with the

Windows Azure platform—it‘s taken care of

by Microsoft,‖ says Gable. ―We can focus on

generating new advertising opportunities

and new consumer products, not on how

well we‘re running our servers.‖

Schulist agrees. ―We don‘t have to deal with

redundancy, backups, or any of that

maintenance,‖ he says. ―We can really

concentrate on innovating. Moving to

Windows Azure frees us up to focus on the

cool stuff.‖

The company also can increase its number

of products without adding IT staff to

manage them. ―Having eliminated some of

our operational responsibilities through the

consolidation project, we can keep our staff

size the same, even as we continue to

develop new applications,‖ says Gable.

The company‘s reduced complexity benefits

other Tribune staff as well. ―We‘re

minimizing our number of applications so

that journalists, editors, and others have to

deal with fewer avenues to get to the

content that they need,‖ comments Gable.

Staffers and consumers alike will enjoy the

increase in server uptime that comes with

Windows Azure. ―The benefit for end users,

such as our online reader base, is

reliability,‖ says Gable. ―We can trust that

the infrastructure is there to support our

delivery of a consistent consumer

experience.‖

New Revenue Opportunities

Tribune will be able to explore new

business opportunities without the risk of

investing significant up-front resources in

projects that it decides not to pursue.

―Using the Windows Azure model lets us

take some risks where otherwise we

couldn‘t afford to,‖ says Gable. ―New

opportunities are open to us because, with

the pay-as-we-go model, we don‘t have to

invest a lot of capital to try out a new idea.‖

The company also can be more agile in

responding to advertisers‘ requests. ―With

Windows Azure, we can expand to include

different revenue opportunities in response

to advertisers‘ changing needs,‖ says Gable.

Greater Relevance

Perhaps the greatest benefit for Tribune is

that its new repository helps the company

make its product more relevant for

consumers. ―We‘re providing access to a

wealth of information without the

limitations of the medium. Content can be

consumed from an online application, it

can be consumed from a mobile

application, and it can be tailored. Being

able to push more relevant information in a

meaningful, thoughtful manner will help us

stay competitive in this changing market,‖

says Gable.

That relevance applies to advertising, too.

―We can use demographic data to target

ads to the individuals who are most likely

to be interested in them,‖ explains Gable.

―That‘s appealing to our advertisers

because they‘re reaching the people they

want to reach. It‘s appealing to consumers

because they‘re getting information about

what they‘re interested in. And it helps us

from an overall revenue standpoint

because, if we‘re able to deliver more

relevant advertisements, advertisers will

make bigger ad purchases.‖

―Putting new

infrastructure in place

was not all that easy, but

we don‘t have to worry

about that anymore.

Before, it took six weeks

to acquire and install

hardware, load the

operating system, and

start development. Now,

we‘re ready to go in

about a day and a half.‖

Steve Gable, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Tribune

Company

Benefit Effect

Pay-as-you-go model Cuts $1.5 million in potential annual costs

Increased ability to quickly scale

infrastructure

Reduces ramp-up time from 6 weeks to 1.5

days

Enhanced scalability Makes it possible to spin up multiple

instances of an application just by changing

an integer

Windows Azure Platform

The Windows Azure platform provides an

excellent foundation for expanding online

product and service offerings. The main

components include:

Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the

development, service hosting, and

service management environment for the

Windows Azure platform. Windows

Azure provides developers with on-

demand compute and storage to host,

scale, and manage web applications on

the Internet through Microsoft data

centers.

Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL

Azure offers the first cloud-based

relational and self-managed database

service built on Microsoft SQL Server

2008 technologies.

Windows Azure platform AppFabric.

With Windows Azure platform AppFabric,

developers can build and manage

applications more easily both on-

premises and in the cloud.

− AppFabric Service Bus connects

services and applications across

network boundaries to help

developers build distributed

applications.

− AppFabric Access Control provides

federated, claims-based access control

for REST web services.

Microsoft "Dallas." Developers and

information workers can use the new

service code-named Dallas to easily

discover, purchase, and manage

premium data subscriptions in the

Windows Azure platform.

To learn more about the Windows Azure

platform, visit:

www.windowsazure.com

For More Information For more information about Microsoft

products and services, call the Microsoft

Sales Information Center at (800) 426-

9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft

Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-

2495. Customers in the United States and

Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing

can reach Microsoft text telephone

(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.

Outside the 50 United States and

Canada, please contact your local

Microsoft subsidiary. To access

information using the World Wide Web,

go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about Tribune

Company products and services, call

(312) 222-9100 or visit the website at:

www.tribune.com

Additional Resources:

Training: Channel9 Windows Azure

Training Course

Download: Windows Azure Training Kit

Download: Windows Azure SDK

White paper: Security Best Practices for

Developing on the Windows Azure

Platform

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published June 2010

Software and Services Windows Azure Platform

− Windows Azure

− Blob Storage

− Windows Azure Content Delivery

Network

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for

Internet Business