Case Study: E4 (Channel 4) wins a BAFTA and launches a scalable, low-cost web community with ThoughtWorks

E4 - Customer Case Study

Channel 4’s youth-focused E4 (watched by over 7 million 16–34s monthly) needed a fast, engaging web community to deepen viewer loyalty and open new revenue paths. The brief was tight and demanding: launch in six months to coincide with a marketing drive, recover costs within a year, and deliver a scalable, responsive community site despite limited shared server capacity and complex CMS integration.

ThoughtWorks led a cross-functional team that delivered a RESTful Java platform, a CMS Query Module for dynamic page-building, and automated moderation, all on just four shared servers. The site went live on time and on budget, handles ~1,000 reads/sec and 60–70 writes/sec, supports rich user participation, and spawned award-winning microsites (the Dead Set microsite won a BAFTA), with ongoing enhancements delivered via an offshore Agile team.

E4