Innovation, education and community drive Salesforce’s annual World Tour. The cloud-based CRM software developer hosts the roadshow each year, attracting customers at each international stop with engaging new technology and customer presentations, and a chance to network and learn. As the Australian leg of the tour drew near, scheduled for March at the Sydney International Convention Center, Salesforce pivoted to a virtualized event to protect the health and safety of its customers, partners and employees in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company enlisted the production expertise of SuiteSpot and AV systems integrator Alpha Media Services to help execute. Reaching attendees online would require a high-quality, low-latency video streaming workflow to ensure smooth content delivery to the Salesforce website and social channels, for which SuiteSpot and AMS turned to AJA HELO H.264 recording and streaming devices.

After evaluating the production plans originally developed for the in-person event, SuiteSpot and AMS re-structured the workflow to support a virtual production, with multiple live studio sets spread across convention halls to accommodate worldwide content delivery to a range of online platforms. Pre-production and setup took place over three days, with the main production wrapping in a day. The crew live streamed a range of keynotes, sessions and panels directly to the Salesforce website and relied on the IBM Content Delivery Network to re-stream select portions of the event to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other online platforms. An AJA HELO delivered the primary stream to the IBM CDN, while another group of HELOs fed content through Wowza and Salesforce’s FTP for online backup, content delivery for distribution, and archiving. 

“HELO is our preferred tool for online delivery, because it’s just so easy to use and reliable; we never worry about the stream skipping a beat,” shared Abraham Zuniga, Managing Director, Alpha Media Services. “It also made perfect sense for this project, given the overwhelming volume of content we needed to deliver across so many platforms. It was integral to the success of this production.”

He concluded “When a client needs bulletproof reliability for a project like this, we always recommend AJA HELO, because the company provides an unmatched level of support and reliability that has cemented our trust in their products. There really aren’t any other streaming solutions that give you the level of confidence that HELO does; it’s a true live production hero.”