Qvest Media to plan and build Asharq media centre in Dubai

Qvest Media has been granted the contract to build the required systems for a multi-platform news and media centre owned by Asharq News Services in the heart of Dubai’s financial district.

This will lead ‘Bloomberg Asharq’ to deliver news across online, social, TV and radio services around the clock to the Arabic speaking population around the world. This project is the first in the MENA region to use IP technology throughout its entire media infrastructure. The use of virtualised on-premise systems and cloud applications as a hybrid architecture for content aggregation, production and distribution also plays a key role.

Asharq has ambitious goals for every aspect of the construction of its media center. Even during the design concept and the spatial planning for the building, Asharq relied on a team of specialists made up of an international architects’ office, local construction firms and the general contractor Qvest Media for all technology-related matters.

Hand in hand, a symbiosis was created between modern interior and workplace design and functional spatial architecture, embedding the editorial, creative and technological operations in the set and studio design.

Following the technology analysis and agreement on the system design, Qvest Media is now starting the process of integrating the media and IT systems. The technological design is based on a sophisticated architecture. A Full-IP network compliant with SMPTE ST 2110 ensures a high level of standardisation and connectivity between the systems, making infrastructural technology changes, such as the switch from full HD to 4K production and distribution, possible at any time.

Alongside the Full-IP-enabled architecture, Asharq has also chosen to set up a hybrid network comprising virtualised systems in the local data centre, as well as applications in the cloud. In this case, the emphasis is on scaling and associated speed advantages, as well as the flexibility of innovative cloud services, thanks to which the facilities will be able to produce breaking news directly as events unfold. Among other things, cloud services continually browse social media and agency feeds in seconds on behalf of journalists.