The News: Australian entertainment giant Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) is using Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) GreenLake to store data on-premises with “cloud-like agility.” You can read the press release on the HPE website.

Southern Cross Austereo Uses HPE GreenLake to Store Podcast Audio

Analyst Take: HPE said SCA use GreenLake storage and infrastructure to support customer audio consumption and digital advertising capabilities. SCA owns 99 radio stations across 64 markets around Australia, 105 TV signals, and a popular LiSTNR audio app that allows live and on-demand listening. These channels collectively allow SCA to reach more than 95% of the Australian population.

After working with HPE for over two decades across all areas of the business, SCA chose GreenLake for a new technical storage and infrastructure solution aligned with its new corporate business strategy.

Neither HPE nor SCA revealed which GreenLake services the Australian firm is using, but HPE sees the deal as validation of its GreenLake edge-to-cloud strategy. Media and entertainment companies such as SCA have diverse needs ranging from high performance for streaming live data to vast capacity requirements to keep archived content for years. Media and entertainment storage spans NAS, SAN, and direct-attached storage (DAS); can use hard disk drives, flash, or tape media; and can be on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid.

GreenLake includes a portfolio of cloud and as a service offerings, include HPE GreenLake for Block Storage, File Storage, Backup & Recovery, and Disaster Recovery.

Due to a requirement for handling real-time workloads, SCA has migrated traditional broadcast capabilities into a virtualized environment. This approach encompasses media management and processing, ensuring that the delivery of live or on-demand content is reliable and of optimal quality. Besides storing broadcast and podcast content, SCA uses GreenLake for sensitive user profile information and behavior data.

“We have a unique business model whereby we needed to retain our on-premises data storage capability to facilitate broadcast listening, but also required a solution that can manage infrastructure at scale, effectively,” SCA CTO Stephen Haddad said in the press release. “Our approach to technology is to work in a reliable and simplified environment, offering the best personalized audio experience, so that we can reach the largest number of people across the country.”

SCA launched LiSTNR in 2020. According to the September 2023 Australian Podcast Ranker, LiSTNR ranked second in monthly listeners for Australian podcast publishers in September 2023. Its Hamish & Andy comedy podcast had the most monthly listeners (940,095) and downloads (2,014,123) in September.

Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.