Global Eagle Entertainment is the leading provider of entertainment and connectivity solutions for the aviation industry. Global Eagle provides airlines with audio, TV programs, movies, media sales, creative services, apps and games for inflight entertainment. Global Eagle also provides satellite connectivity to power inflight Wi-Fi, portals and linear TV channels. Chances are that last time you were on a flight, you enjoyed Global Eagle’s entertainment or connectivity services.
We often think we are solving unique problems, problems that no other industry or company is facing but, in reality, this is not the case. There are some differences across the sectors—airlines for example have long tech upgrade cycles compared to consumer electronics—but at the heart of most content businesses is a content supply chain. When Global Eagle started its digital content supply chain transformation program, it turned to well-known solution partners in broadcast to help. One of the key partners selected was SDVI and SDVI’s Rally product.
SDVI Rally is a key component of Global Eagle’s new Open(tm) platform. Open is the cloud-based platform that powers Global Eagle’s digital supply chain and the next generation airline and passenger digital entertainment experiences. SDVI Rally gives Open the ability import, process, and deliver content to 80 airlines’ customers in 125 formats and acquire over 50,000 masters per year from thousands of content partners. Global Eagle has to support video and audio technology spanning three decades, from analog physical format delivery to UHD. SDVI’s Adobe Creative Cloud solution enables Global Eagle’s content specialists to comply and edit content to ensure it is suitable for airline passengers of different ages and from different cultures.
Global Eagle chose SDVI for their expertise in dynamically managing cloud resources at scale and the speed at which they could integrate all the content factory tools needed to service 25 years of audio and video formats. Cloud-based solutions allow Global Eagle to scale without upfront hardware investment, be more responsible and agile to the changing needs of airlines and digital passengers and, most importantly, it enables them to focus on what they do best: providing connected entertainment solutions for globally traveling audiences
We’ll be preparing a more comprehensive case study of what Global Eagle does including how adopting cloud solutions allows them to remain the market leader in connected entertainment solutions. In the meantime, you can learn more about the company’s content supply chain approach from Global Eagle CTO Chris Esposito.