RT Adopts Qligent Cloud Monitoring for OTT

MELBOURNE, FLA. and NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA—Qligent said it has delivered a large-scale QoS and QoE OTT monitoring system to RT—formerly Russia Today. The initial deployment covers multiple points of OTT service monitoring in major cities across the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates, with 24/7 access to the system for RT monitoring staff from anywhere with an Internet connection.

As part of the turnkey software-as-a-service to reduce RT’s in-house integration responsibilities, Qligent’s partner The Tecom Group is handling strategic deployment of the entire monitoring infrastructure. In collaboration with experts at RT, Tecom Group determined the most effective and efficient monitoring strategy across global locations and came up with Qligent’s Vision software-defined platform for remote, virtualized deployment and operation.

RT’s current OTT portfolio includes its YouTube channel, which with more than 2.5 billion views and nearly 3 million subscribers is considered the world’s number one OTT TV news network. RT additionally distributes OTT content over its Website at RT.com; and its mobile apps on iOS, Android and Windows Media devices. For the purpose of the OTT service monitoring, Qligent’s innovative Vision platform allows for the capture, collection and analysis of QoS and QoE parameters, the latter of which determines the end viewer experience. As Vision is cloud-enabled and allows proactive control over service quality, Vision makes it possible to carry out distributed monitoring in locations worldwide without the need to deploy a network of probes.

The Tecom Group’s deployment plan ensures the appropriate positioning of virtualized probes at strategic monitoring points, with occasional redeployment to new locations over a central IT infrastructure. In addition to the virtualized deployment of monitoring probes, The Tecom Group additionally reconciles changes with the virtual server cluster to ensure high capacity, availability and quality of service.

The turnkey virtual monitoring infrastructure supplies compliance recording for further analysis, verification, and reconciliation with their vendor partners. The system will automatically send an alarm notification via email or SMS text to both Tecom Group and RT personnel in the event of content delivery failures, ensuring quick response and resolution to performance issues.

While the initial rollout covers the most important cities with RT broadcasts currently, the number and location of the monitoring points may expand as requirements change.