Keynote presentation from Webmaniacs 2008, presented by Ashley Streb of Brightcove. Posted with the permission of the author.

1. Platform as Art: A Developer’s Perspective
Ashley Streb, Vice President of Technology

2. © 2006 Brightcove, Inc. All rights reserved. Company Confidential.2
Start at the end
Media enables us to
Touch
Inspire
Entertain
Build, create and be passionate about Adobe!

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Agenda
Platform as a Service (PaaS) Landscape
Brightcove’s Media PaaS
The Making of a Platform with Adobe
Technology
Q + A

4. Platform as a Service (PaaS) Landscape
Defining “Platform as a Service”
PaaS: What, where and how

5. Defining “Platform as a Service”

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Services through Cloud Computing
Consume broad range of services on demand
No Software or Servers!
Easy to scale with infrastructure in the cloud
Dynamically adapt compute power
Take advantage of utility metered models
Tap into operational excellence and economies of
scale

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Three Broad Categories
Infrastructure
Amazon EC2/S3, Google AppEngine, Sun Grid,
3Tera, IBM Blue Cloud
Software
Brightcove, Salesforce, NetSuite, Omniture, Ning,
SpringCM
Platform
Brightcove, Salesforce, Ning, LongJump, Intuit
QuickBase, Bungee Labs Connect

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Platform Defined
A "platform" is an expressive medium.
Many existing platforms: Windows, SymbianOS, Flex
Ability to build and create
Platform as a Service
Create, consume, deploy and run in “the cloud”

9. PaaS: What, where and how

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PaaS: What
Problem, what problem?
Targeted capabilities
Example: Consumer
Platform
Backend Applications
Fast, sexy UIs
Tap into Internet fabric
Analytics/Reporting

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PaaS: Where
Marc Andreessen Blog
Access API: Flickr, yelp.
Plug-in API: Facebook,
MySpace
Runtime Environment:
BungeeConnect
Runtime
Environment
Plug-in API
(plug into core interface)
Access API
(consume from cloud)

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PaaS: How
How can we build and
create?
Different types of
developers
Need a blend of tools
Code SDKs
WYSIWYG
Tool
XML
DSL
Web service
APIs
Application

13. Brightcove’s Media PaaS – the “How”

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Media PaaS – the “How”
Templating WYSIWYG Tool
Web service APIs
Runtime Engine, Player APIs

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Templating Example

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Templating Usage
WYSIWYG Interface
Control colors, styles,
themes and policies
Fast, easy, custom!

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Web service Example

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Rendering Engine, Player API Examples

19. Stats
Process & Team Organization
Infrastructure and Architecture
The Making of a Platform with Adobe
Technology

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Stats
135 Million Unique Users/month (as of 6 – 9
months ago)
~2 billion server transactions/month
1.5 Petabytes (1,500,000 GBs) of media
delivered/month
Thousands of platform users, hundreds of major
media brands, 50 television networks,
newspaper and magazine publishers, and all
the major record labels in the US

21. Process & Team Organization

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Process
We use the Scrum Methodology
Month long sprints
2x2 major release schedule
Cross-functional team, 4 – 9 people
Stand-up, user stories, story points, PO, burndown,
retrospective
Operate 10 teams across 3 geographies

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Process
Common language across the entire
organization.
Adapt to changing market
Deep collaboration
It’s a marathon, not a sprint!

24. Infrastructure and Architecture

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Brightcove’s Applications
Server
Consumer Players Business Applications
Media Publishing AdsVideo Player Photo Player
Server
Server
Server
Server
Server
Server
Server

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Adobe Technology Used
ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3
Flex 1.5, Flex 2
AMF 0 (OpenAMF), AMF 3 (BlazeDS)
FMS 2.1, FMS 3.0
FlexBuilder

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Consumer Video Player

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Consumer Video Player Technology
ActionScript 3, AVM2
AMF3 as client/server communication protocol
• ~70K LOC written
• FlexBuilder as IDE/Developer Tool
• Migrated from AS2 Players

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Challenges
• Speed + Dynamic Experience
• Dynamic delivery of media

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Speed + Dynamic Experience
• AVM2 (97% penetration)
• Partition into libraries (~50%
savings)
• Obfuscation/minification
• Consumer client load vs. business
application load
0
2000
4000
6000
AS2 AS3
No Modules 341K
Player Load 169K
Menu 34K
Overlay Controls 40K
Volume Controls 16K
Ad Support 45K
Load Time in MS
SWF Size in KB

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Speed + Dynamic Experience continued….
• Client/Server communication
– Think about how to organize
server calls
– Think about wire protocol
• Getters vs. e4x, 13x faster access
• AMF Open specification; JMeter
and other applications
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
AMF0 AMF3 XML
Payload in bytes

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Dynamic Delivery of Media
• Personalized underwear but not media?!
• Media files are BIG!
• PD vs. Streaming for video delivery

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Business Applications

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Business Applications Technology
• Flex 2, AVM2
– Flex vs. ActionScript vs. DHTML
• AMF3 as client/server communication protocol
• Cairngorm as micro-architecture
• ~100K LOC written, 150 Commands
• FlexBuilder as IDE/Developer Tool
• FlexUnit for unit testing
• Homegrown integration tool

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Challenges
• Development process
• Fast UI Responses

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Development process – skills and workflow
• Not enough Flex people! Training Java people.
• Work across technology lines
• Strong emphasis on design; auto-generate
SWCs

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Development process – code layout
Common
(Shared UI + Classes)
Services
(Server Integration)
Parts
(Cairngorm Specifics)
Ad Application Publishing ApplicationMedia Application

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Development process – code layout
• Each project contains own set of unit tests
• Shared project layers are compiled as SWC,
enables faster compile
• Each project checks in .project,
.actionScriptProperties and .flexProperties file

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Fast UI Responses
• AVM2
• How to get Data?
– Structure server API; initial view, lazy load, different
types of DTOs
– Make clients intelligent about their needs
– Datagrid presentation strategies

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Servers on Fire!

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Server Technology Overview
• Java 6, 64 bit JVM
• Tomcat, Spring, Hibernate and Coherence
• BlazeDS as AMF gateway
• ~350K LOC
• JUnit, JMeter, Lunt
• Eclipse IDE, Emacs, Vi

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Challenges
• Low latency, high throughput
– Better user experience
– Minimize capex, Facebook was rumored to have
raised 100M to buy 50K servers. That’s a lot of
dough!
• Scale

43. © 2006 Brightcove, Inc. All rights reserved. Company Confidential.43
Summary
• Understand PaaS and how to evaluate
• Case study of a successful company built on
Adobe Platform
• Great platforms enable great applications - Go
forth and create!

44. Question and Answers
Drop me a line: astreb@brightcove.com