Sii’s expert team contributed to a highly automated copyright system for ICE, a licensing and processing hub supporting over 250 000 creators
It’s hard to imagine the world without music streaming services like Spotify or YouTube. However, there is a great deal of work to ensure that composers and songwriters are compensated accurately for the use of their works. To address this challenge, ICE (International Copyright Enterprise) works hard on initiatives that benefit the creators they represent. Sii took part in three such projects carried out by ICE – a leading provider of services for publishers, Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) and rights holders – focused on copyrights, online processing and licensing.
Music needs assistance
International Copyright Enterprise (ICE) – a globally trusted market leader whose services include copyright administration, multi-territorial online licensing and online processing solutions – turned to Sii Poland for support. The client’s IT department (Engineering) located in Berlin was looking for a reliable partner to maintain their IBMi system, which was then the platform that ICE’s core business was managed on. With its proximity to DACH countries, highly qualified engineers willing to work in both popular and more challenging technologies (e.g. Scala and Oracle PLSQL), nearshoring experience and quick ramp-up, Sii Poland turned out to be the best choice.
Three projects – many challenges
2017 was the first step in the collaboration between Sii and ICE. Since that time, the support offered by the largest Polish IT-services vendor has grown from 5 to 34 cross-technology engineers in 2021. Sii specialists have been engaged in a range of ICE’s major projects, working across services in online processing, existing copyright management and the new copyright platform – CUBE.
- The first Sii Copyright project was based on supporting the ICE systems that with the client’s experts and processes consolidate incoming copyright data from multiple sources. Thanks to Sii’s expertise in IBM RPG and a great team effort, ICE systems continue to evolve and deliver a single validated & authoritative source of copyright data, which allows accurate distribution of royalties to rights holders.
- For the Online Processing project, Sii was asked to support the ongoing operations, enhancing daily systems capabilities and keeping different workflows smooth across a range of steps – from managing DSP usage reporting, working with repertoire sources and matching processes.
- The CUBE project will deliver a range of benefits to rightsholders, including even greater efficiency in handling multi-territorial data. To deliver a highly automated copyright system and increase both the speed and capacity of data processing, the solution harnesses a common data policy. The project has leveraged Sii’s qualified engineers specializing in technologies like Java, PHP, PLSQL and, most importantly, RPG. Being aware of the importance of testing/QA, Sii has been also asked to provide a highly efficient testing team. – We are conducting comprehensive manual, automated and performance tests of the CUBE platform. The main challenge in the project is the level of complexity of the copyright management application, but thanks to close cooperation with the client and providing top-quality testing services, we can make great progress – says Piotr Bizukojć, Business Manager at Sii.
We are one team
After 4 years of collaboration, ICE and Sii have a solid relationship based on mutual trust. Being an integral part of the client’s IT team, Sii engineers allow them to fully concentrate on their core business, also under unforeseen circumstances. With expertise in a variety of state-of-the-art and legacy technologies as well as a deep understanding of business, they monitor ICE’s systems, ready to react to and prevent any type of IT problems and engage in tech transition whenever needed. – Operating in 14 locations all around Poland, Sii has quick access to new software developers, even with niche technological backgrounds. Thanks to Sii Delivery Managers and dedicated Account Manager, the support offered to ICE is well and efficiently managed and structured – explains Ramy Kamel, VP – CTO at ICE.
What the future holds
Due to the exponential growth in online music usage (and the associated workload for rightsholder representatives), ICE has focused on how to deliver the best technical solutions. The adopted approach is to develop a platform based on event-driven, microservices architecture with Kafka and Kubernetes to make the processing of online music usage more manageable, accessible and reliable. Having worked on dozens of similar projects for global brands, Sii is the right partner to support ICE.
If you are interested in a new, scalable environment, microservices and cloud solutions or would like to use Big Data in your company, contact us.
