Paul McCartney's instant-on digital library

HP today announced the launch of Paul McCartney's private cloud-based digital library.

The HP solution provides MPL Communications with instant access to its diverse media assets on an HP Converged Infrastructure ready for future growth.

McCartney's collection currently includes more than 1 million items, including photographs, video footage from live concerts, rolls of film, videotapes and reels, music recordings, original works of art, as well as memorabilia. With HP, McCartney's personal assets are now digitised.

HP Enterprise Services experts worked with MPL Communications to plan, develop, integrate and test the library. The library is built on an HP Converged Infrastructure, based on modular building blocks of HP servers, storage, networking and management software. The assets are housed in a private cloud managed from HP commercial data centres.

Consumers today demand instant access, using a myriad of devices, from any location, at any time. With MPL Communications' former technology infrastructure, finding specific assets from McCartney's collection could be a complex and time-consuming process. HP Information Optimisation solutions provide an optimised repository of the content, allowing the organisation to be quicker, nimbler and smarter by gaining access to the right information when it is needed.

“It's really exciting, because even if I'm out on tour anywhere in the world, I will be able to say, okay, 'Wings 1976 tour' and instantly, it will come up. You've got all the information, all the photos from it. And you'll have written accounts - personal accounts and critical accounts - of what happened,” said McCartney.

“Working with MPL Communications, we are demonstrating how an Instant-On music organisation can be achieved to create, manage and distribute engaging content to an increasingly connected world,” said Jan Zadak, executive vice-president, Enterprise Sales and Marketing, HP. “This is an exciting journey as we continue to work closely with Paul McCartney to develop technology solutions that will preserve and extend his legacy.”

HP designed a Hybrid Delivery solution for MPL Communications, which consists of an off-premise, cloud-based model, combined with the company's redesigned and expanded on-premise IT infrastructure. MPL Communications' refreshed data centre infrastructure consists of HP BladeSystem Matrix, HP ProLiant servers, HP StorageWorks and HP Networking solutions as its core foundation.

This solution provides MPL Communications the flexibility required to deal with its rapidly expanding library and to ensure the security of McCartney's priceless assets. MPL Communications will house a copy locally of the digital library to reduce the organisation's dependence on the speed of the local telecommunication system to upload or download assets from the private cloud. HP will maintain a redundant system in a remote data facility, with a full replication of the digital library.

The private cloud enables MPL Communications to extend its business operations beyond its data centre in London and protects the library from the risk of natural disaster or unexpected downtime.

HP Enterprise Security experts assessed the library's security needs and developed a solution to protect the assets at every stage of their use. The solution addresses strict security requirements across the entire infrastructure, including application security, information security, and identity and access management.

HP Data Protector and HP Database Archiving software reduce the need for duplication of existing library files and storage capacity.

Attendees at HP DISCOVER Americas, HP's premiere client event, will get a firsthand view into the collaboration between HP and MPL Communications, with Paul McCartney headlining at the event's closing ceremonies.

More information about MPL Communications and its Instant-On journey, as well as access to videos and details on the digital library is available at www.hp.com/go/mccartney.