Survey Says: On-Demand Polling Application Delivers Results for IB and Its TV Station Partners

Founded in 1995 as a pioneer in TV/Web convergence, Internet Broadcasting enables TV news stations to combine the power of the Internet and TV to deliver immediate, reliable, and up-to-date information to millions. As the first and largest network of local news Web channels, IB Web channels represent the leading American television broadcasting stations, including all of General Electric Company’s NBC outlets and Cox Television. IB regularly conducts polls and surveys across its interactive news sites. On average, these polling applications generate 10 million requests per month, while certain high-profile news stories dramatically increase the application request rates. IBS needed its Web-based polling and survey applications to withstand spikes in requests around major news events, when viewer feedback becomes even more critical.

IB has long relied on Akamai’s distributed computing platform to effectively increase the performance and flexibility of their infrastructure while reducing the resources required to support its Web operations. With Akamai, IB is always ready to aggregate and reliably deliver local news sites, mitigate the impact of flash crowds caused by major news stories, and ensure 100% site availability. Using EdgeComputing powered by WebSphere, IB is further extending its dynamic content out to the Internet edge by running its Web-based applications for polling and surveys across Akamai’s global network. The result? IB is able to dramatically reduce the load on its origin servers, greatly enhancing the performance and reliability of the user experience—and the survey results speak for themselves.