Pearson Scales to 40K API Calls a Minute

HOW ORANGE LOGIC AND PEARSON WORK TOGETHER

PEARSON SCALES TO 40K API CALLS A MINUTE

Find out how the education powerhouse handled heavy back-to-school traffic while cutting hosting costs by 30% with Orange Logic's DAM platform.

Delivering materials that help the world learn

With more than 160 million users in over 70 countries, Pearson is the world’s largest learning company. As learners came to prefer video, Pearson built its own video player, which averages 70 million plays a month and peaks during back-to-school season. But with internal assets scattered, it was hard to make the most of them.

The goal

Pearson needed a system that could make its material available to learners at scale, meeting up to 40,000 API calls a minute while reining in hosting costs. The solution had to cover storage, transcoding, API services, delivery, and a connection to the Pearson video player, and be accessible to the whole company.

“What I wanted was a way of making sure that we could deliver targeted and enriched video content, and that we could deliver things that would increase outcomes for the people who trust us with their education.”
— Kyrce Swenson, Solutions Manager, Pearson

The challenge

Pearson’s existing system was opaque, inaccessible, and expensive. Files were stored in folders labeled by year and ISBN with little metadata, so users spent hours hunting for files or gave up. Production hubs operated in isolation, and teams like marketing were effectively blocked, leading to duplicate assets.

The solution

Connecting MAM and the Pearson player
A specific API call developed by Orange Logic minimizes transactions between Orange MAM and Pearson’s system through a cached CDN layer, so only new videos are pulled from the MAM. Pearson also moved to its own Amazon CloudFront account for volume-based savings.

Searchability
A consistent metadata schema, batch metadata editing, AI tags, and auto-captions make millions of assets discoverable. Related files such as captions are grouped with their videos automatically.

“We’ve increased the effectiveness of our search, gained insight on our actual usage, and reduced our costs by 30%.”
— Kyrce Swenson, Solutions Manager, Pearson

The results

Pearson has uploaded more than a million assets into Orange MAM and finds assets better than ever. Video production teams, other content groups, and even marketing are now using the MAM. During the August and September back-to-school rush, the MAM was ready to meet demand of 40,000 API calls a minute.

Lessons learned

Look for a system that can scale. Make sure it can transcode and distribute large assets and scale up and down with demand.

Enrich video with AI. Auto-captioning and facial recognition add context quickly.

Go API first. Connect your asset platform to the systems you already rely on, like Pearson’s video player.