The BBC has set out what it sees as the key business and technology challenges for the Corporation as it enters the on-demand world, a world in which it will operate with multiple partners.
Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of New Media & Technology, outlined the Beeb’s strategy in a shared keynote address with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at the MIX06 conference in Las Vegas. MIX06 is an event hosted by Microsoft and is a showcase for web developers, designers and business professionals.
Highfield said that the BBC had to ensure that it was highly technologically innovative in offering audiences platform-neutral, universal access to its content.
To keep pace with the unprecedented rate of change, Highfield also said it was imperative that the BBC worked with partners such as Microsoft, on a non-exclusive basis.
"We have a duty of universality, so it's vital that we innovate through a number of strategic partnerships with technology companies and distributors such as Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Homechoice, NTL and Telewest.
"The challenge is to create an end-to-end infrastructure for all our programming, to deliver content to all our audiences in the most cost-effective, simple and flexible way possible. The last ten yards of railway track - seamless delivery from the PC to the TV - is still to be built within the home."
Highfield offered a vision of this 'Web 2.0' world when he showed how a future version of the BBC's current work-in-progress iMP (Integrated Media Player) might be integrated and delivered by the PC desktop, using features and enhancements present in Windows Vista, Microsoft's new operating system due for release towards the end of the year.
