Case Study: Smart TV Alliance Cloud Portal

The Smart TV Alliance Inc. is founded by LG Electronics, TP Vision and Toshiba to create attractive, platform-independent services for Smart TV applications.  Smart TV Alliance’s mission is to offer a large and productive ecosystem for smart TV application development that gives manufacturers a faster path to more and better TV applications, enables developers to write applications once for many different platforms, and provides consumers with a rich source of content and services. The organization publishes regularly new software development kits, emulators, specifications and white papers.

FPT Software was entrusted with the task of creating a common Cloud-based Developer Portal and Application Repository which serves as a shared platform for STA members to publish their applications to compliant Smart TV Alliance members’ products.  The Portal was supposed to enable developers to register, develop, QA test and publish their applications for multiple manufacturers’ smart TVs to a common repository.

The goal is to reduce  fragmentation  in  Smart  TV  technology  and  in  the  market,  attract  more  publishers  and  developers,  achieve  cost  efficiency  by  avoiding  the  creation  of  numerous separate TV  manufacturer repositories  and  portals,  while  maintaining  healthy  competition  among  the  individual  TV  manufacturers, publishers and developers.

This portal is considered as the foundation system for the next activities to make things “Build Once, Run Everywhere”.

• Provide a Cloud-based application development platform for STA’s developer community;

• Provide an application hosting service for applications in App Repository;

• Deploy a global project with multi-sites and multi stakeholders in a short timeframe and in early-stage requirements;

• Accommodate with different QA offerings for developers, for fast-pace business changes;

• Ensure continuous support to developers around the world, 24/7, at a low cost for developer’s motivation;

This is a global project with multi sites and multi stakeholders in a short timeframe and in early-stage requirements.

• FPT Software defined a flexible implementation methodology based on Scrum methodology to make the communications more transparent, pro-active and responsive to changes.

• With a worldwide Delivery Network, FPT Software rapidly established a team with offshore developers and onsite members working directly from the client’s location;

The Developer Portal and App Repository will be access by developers all over the world with a huge number of applications submitted. Thus, the system must be a global, flexible, scalable and highly available infrastructure.

• FPT made the system design to leverage Amazon Web Services across multi regions and apply best of breed software platform on highly available cloud infrastructure.

Beside the Developer Portal and App Repository development, Quality Assurance process is an important part.

• FPT built a comprehensive, flexible workflow for whole the QA process to continuous support developer around the world, 24*7, at a low cost for developer’s motivation.

• To ensure the service level of QA services, FPT maximize the use of automated tools for compliance, security & QA checks to ensure standardization, compliance enforcement with high productivity and combine workflow with AWS SQS and automation environment provisioning to ensure execution of automation jobs.

In general, the project was divided in three phases:

• Phase 1: Develop demo version;

• Phase 2: Develop final version;

• Phase 3: Rollout system on Cloud and Maintenance

 Technical QA Support

 Application verification/QA, certification services

 Application security services

 Application hosting services for developers (if requested)

 Migration of Current developer website and database

Smart TV Alliance was launched in 2012 to unite the fragmented smart TV market and provide consumers with richer smart TV experiences and access to more content and better services.

• The new Common Developer Portal deployed by FPT Software enables developers to submit applications to a single portal, have apps underwent a common QA process, and then have them resided in an App Repository where various TV manufacturers can  pull  apps to publish on their own stores.

• The Alliance’s common Quality Assurance process triggers multi-device application publication on the new Common Developer Portal, allowing publishers to reach more devices and users in one simple process. This simplifies and enhances the publication process while reducing cost and time.

“The Alliance’s common SDK and specification, joint QA process and single contract reduce the time and cost of application publication, resolving development inefficiencies and alleviating the fragmented TV market,” said Seijiro Yasuki, president of Smart TV Alliance and chief technology executive of Toshiba Lifestyle Products & Services Corporation. “With today’s launch of the Common Developer Portal, the Alliance delivers a true ‘build once, run everywhere’ ecosystem.”

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