CANNES: The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, producers of the International Emmy Awards, will now enable their 500 judges to screen this year's award nominations at home over the SAVVIS network and power sixteen judging centers.

This has been made possible by SAVVIS Communications, a leading global managed services provider and the exclusive provider of broadband to the International Emmy Awards.

The International Emmys cater to television programmes produced outside of the United States. SAVVIS this time will save the Academy time and money by digitizing the International Emmy Award nominated programmes and offering the judges a secure, online screening process via SAVVIS' secure, high performance global IP network. This will result in the Academy not only saving time but also the cost factor of producing and shipping hundreds of tapes in multiple formats to locations around the world.

"Our industry-leading Internet-based screening process is the future of the business. It integrates broadband transmissions and network solutions to deliver a simultaneous, worldwide judging system for the International Emmy competition," says International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences president Bruce Paisner. "Previously, the International Emmy judging process was costly and time-consuming. Now SAVVIS' global media services have converged the digitization and distribution of the nominated shows by allowing us to benefit from SAVVIS' managed services and global IP network."

SAVVIS' strategic approach is based on the use of virtualization technology, a utility services model, and automated software management and provisioning systems. This allows SAVVIS to dynamically provision and manages its customers' dedicated network, hosting, server, and storage solutions from an IT resource pool offering improved performance and flexibility at a lower total cost

SAVVIS' Global Rich Media Services vice president & general manager Darcy Lorincz says "We can help companies manage every step of the content lifecycle process - from creation to distribution, from film and video, to images and audio in virtually any format or bit-rate."