Case Study

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AccuWeather.com Builds a Name That Says it All

Industry Focus

Full-service weather company

Size

113 meteorologists and over 400 total employees130,000 clients worldwide

Networking Solution

Content delivery service replicates and caches content across the Internet; high-speed fiber ring ensures capacity to handle weather-driven volume spikes

Business Value

Deliver the most accurate and timely weather information, supporting its mission to save lives and protect property

About Our Customer

Since its start forecasting for utilities in 1962, AccuWeather has grown into The World’s Weather Authority®, a preferred source of weather data with operations across the globe. With 113 meteorologists on staff, AccuWeather has more forecasters under one roof than anyone else. These professionals gather weather data from multiple sources and create high-precision forecasts for both casual and professional clients. Some 150 million page views are recorded on the AccuWeather.com website each month; hundreds of TV, radio and newspaper clients and more than 20,000 Internet sites use AccuWeather forecasts. Farmers, manufacturers, energy traders, school districts and other commercial clients rely on AccuWeather to make critical and sometimes life saving business decisions.

Situation

With multi-layered forecasts and reports delivered over multiple channels, AccuWeather provides millions the weather data they need to manage their days. When weather turns ugly and threatens property, fortunes and lives, hits on the AccuWeather.com website soar and media audiences focus on the latest AccuWeather predictions. To keep critical information flowing, AccuWeather set three goals. The first was to deliver daily content, including rich graphics and streaming video, quickly and efficiently. The second was to secure the vast bandwidth to handle those weather-driven spikes in demand. Lastly, the third was to stay focused on the weather, and let someone else manage the network.

Solution

AccuWeather.com distributes its content and videos using AT&T Intelligent Content Distribution^SM Service. With its widespread network of delivery nodes, the service works like a system of dispersed information warehouses that use intelligent network functions to deliver requested content from the best source. Therefore, the content is served from these many distributed locations that are close to the requesting end-users. This approach improves online service for AccuWeather.com customers by speeding up page refreshes and providing quicker downloads, all with increased reliability. A broadband fiber optic connection to the AT&T global IP network provides the bandwidth and reliability to meet bursts in demand that can reach up to a million hits per day. Because AT&T manages these services, AccuWeather.com can mind the weather, not the network.

Weather Information How and When You Want It

From a first glance out at the rising sun to checking the evening temperature, people keep an eye on the weather. After all, knowing what lies ahead can make all the difference, whether you’re planning a picnic, pouring a driveway, setting out on your commute – or evacuating ahead of a hurricane.

AccuWeather is the world’s preferred source for weather information. Many log on to the AccuWeather.com website or connect by wireless device. Others tune in by TV or radio or check their newspaper’s AccuWeather.com map. Commercial customers subscribe to AccuWeather’s custom services or rely on severe weather warnings from subsidiary WeatherData Services, Inc. AccuWeather delivers forecasts and severe weather bulletins to more than 110 million Americans daily.

It’s a long way from the company’s humble start in 1962, supplying seasonal weather and snow reports for local utilities and ski areas in central Pennsylvania. But founder Dr. Joel N. Myers, a former Assistant Professor and Lecturer on meteorology at Penn State University in State College, Pa., would storm the world of forecasting. By 2003 AccuWeather.com was providing content to more than 600 websites, and each month millions of individual viewers were logging onto the company’s own AccuWeather.com site.

All About the Audience

As it grew, AccuWeather fine-tuned its focus on what clients need to know about weather and how they want to receive it. “One of the things we have excelled at as a core competency is understanding what is valuable to a user,” said Barry L. Myers, CEO.

Today, AccuWeather.com delivers pinpoint local forecasts for 2.7 million locations in the U.S. and worldwide, augmented with radar scans, photos and videos produced daily for hundreds of metropolitan areas that feature the company’s 22 on-air presenters. AccuWeather provides Web content for thousands of Internet sites and weather for more than 1,500 radio, TV and newspaper clients. Its own site lays out forecasts 15 days into the future and hour-by-hour during the day. With a click a brief video forecast can be accessed. Those videos are streamed on demand to customers visiting the AccuWeather.com website.

To make weather news more useful, AccuWeather has created unique ways to assess climate effects. Indices show the outlook for UV radiation, pollen, air quality and mosquito activity, dog walking, running, lawn care, outdoor barbeques, arthritis pain – even the likelihood a hairdo will go frizzy. With a click a brief video forecast can be accessed.

Weather enthusiasts and pro’s can sign up for enhanced fee-based services. “We have various premium products,” said Jim Candor, Senior Vice President for New Media. “We have AccuWeather.com Premium and Professional, AccuWeather.com Radar Plus and AccuWeather.com Lightning Plus. We provide weather information for digital signage as well as to companies to help their operations.”

The company is also focused on the growing audience carrying mobile devices. “Somebody with a mobile device has very limited real estate they can look at,” said Myers. “They need to get to information quickly; it needs to be understandable and needs to help them make decisions about a whole variety of things that may affect their life. We specialize in doing that, and I think that has led to our success.

“We have really evolved into a media company with weather content as much as a weather supply company,” Myers added. “Our audience now is the world – anyone who can carry a wireless device or can connect into the Internet, can connect to AccuWeather.”

Innovation and Technology Help AccuWeather Succeed

Based on Science Park Road just four miles from the school of meteorology at Penn State University, AccuWeather is rooted in science and higher education. No surprise then that innovation and technology are keys to the company’s success.

Forecasts begin as the company gathers huge amounts of raw weather data that is received via its network and processed through the proprietary AccuWeather Forecast Engine™. Professional meteorologists interpret the information, the AccuWeather art department creates supporting graphics, presenters step before the camera to create local forecasts and the production goes live on AccuWeather.com.

Every day AccuWeather creates vast amounts of fresh digital content; millions log in. It’s essential to provide a network capable of delivering all that content to all those users with the quality and speed that meets AccuWeather service standards.

“The AccuWeather mission is to save lives and to protect property,” said Steven Smith, Chief Information Officer. “We need the technology to make sure we can deliver on that promise.” This became very apparent the day before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. The same day federal authorities forecast “minimal flooding,” AccuWeather issued a warning of life-threatening flooding that could cover 50 to 70 percent of the city. That prediction proved tragically accurate, and later won recognition in a bipartisan Congressional report on the disaster.

“We want to be the choice for weather information,” Smith said. “We spend a lot of time and effort making sure that our product offerings fit around that. It just makes sense to keep our focus in that area and not have to worry about the distraction of managing the network ourselves. So we use an expert, AT&T, to do that.”

Instead of attempting to serve its millions of users from a single location and risking reliability and performance problems, AccuWeather distributes its content and videos using AT&T Intelligent Content DistributionSM Service. With its widespread network of delivery nodes, the service works like a system of dispersed information warehouses that use intelligent network functions to deliver requested content from the best source. End-users don’t have to go all the way to the “factory” at AccuWeather headquarters to get the weather information they want. Rather, the content is served from many distributed locations that are close to the requesting end-users ensuring that they get the weather information they need reliably and quickly. To keep information current, ICDS monitors AccuWeather.com for content changes which are promptly replicated.

“We want to be leading edge in terms of our product offering and the way that we present and distribute the data,” Smith said. “We felt that a provider like AT&T has the perfect expertise to manage the network, as opposed to having us bring in that capability and cultivate it here.”

Big Weather Means Big Challenges

The growth in AccuWeather.com content is not the only technical challenge. A series of dramatic hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires and blizzards has turned weather into headline news. When such major weather events strike, public interest and concern spiral, and visits to AccuWeather.com accelerate.

“With the growth that we continue to see in our user base and the new products we are putting out, we need to make sure that when these major events occur – hurricanes, snowstorms or whatever – the bandwidth is going to be there,” Smith said. “This year we upgraded to an OC48 ring with AT&T.” The AT&T ACCU-Ring® OC48 connection to the IP network provides all the bandwidth needed (up to 2.5 Gbps) to meet surges in demand. Multi-path routing reinforces reliability.

“We feel we have laid the groundwork for the future here to ensure our bandwidth can meet whatever the spike in demand could be,” Smith added.

Why AT&T? As CEO Myers put it, “We are always looking for people who are flexible, cooperative, easy to work with and serve our needs. We want people who can make things happen quickly, because we’re a fast-paced company. We just found over time that AT&T was that kind of a company.”

Voice of the Customer

“We have really evolved into a media company with weather content as much as a weather supply company. Our audience now is the world – anyone who can carry a wireless device or can connect into the Internet, can connect to AccuWeather.”

– Barry L. Myers, CEO, AccuWeather.com