Case Study: BBC achieves scalable, record-breaking Olympic digital coverage with MarkLogic

Scaling to Olympic Proportions

The BBC needed to deliver continuous, richly detailed Olympic coverage for more than 10,000 athletes across web, mobile, tablet and broadcast during London 2012. Facing nonstop real-time feeds—live video from 27 venues, event stats, IOC data, press and social media—and a sophisticated, multitasking audience, the broadcaster replaced its 15-year-old static publishing model with a dynamic publishing approach to assemble and deliver timely, personalized content at scale.

BBC combined an OWLIM triple store for linked-data, ontological aggregation with MarkLogic’s enterprise NoSQL server for high-volume asset storage and real-time processing. This architecture automated relationships, served customized iPlayer and second-screen experiences (including live restart and time-coded video segments), and scaled to unprecedented demand: 106 million requests for Olympic video, 55 million global browsers, 2.8 PB of data in one day and a daily record of 7.1 million UK browsers—setting a new standard for digital event coverage.

BBC

Phil Fearnley

General Manager. News & Knowledge