EMI is nearing completion of a major project to digitise and unite international operations on a common IT platform.

The global music company, whose artists include Robbie Williams and Coldplay, started working on the transformation programme, dubbed Digitising EMI Music, in 2003.

During years of growth by acquisition, the organisation has inherited numerous disparate IT systems, which it hopes to standardise onto common desktop and enterprise resource planning (ERP) management systems.

EMI chief technology officer Andrew Hickey says the company wanted to move the production, distribution and management of its music products into a modern digital environment.

‘The digitising music initiative is an investment in technology renewal to meet the needs of the changing marketplace,’ Hickey told Computing.

‘We wanted an infrastructure set that we could roll out globally, but that would also be agile so we could meet new market needs, as the numbers of digital recordings sold start to grow.’

The company is using ERP software from SAP for transactional and general operational management tasks. It has installed the technology at its UK sites and is in the process of deploying the system at its Japanese offices. This will be followed by implementation at US sites, and some 50 other countries.

EMI is also finishing the installation of Microsoft desktop systems for digital storage, the .Net development environment for product marketing, and Microsoft’s server, database and middleware products to provide a common, global infrastructure.

‘The production process of music, sold through iTunes or as a CD for example, where the artist’s work is delivered to the artists and repertoire (A&R) department, and then distributed around the world as a packaged product, can now all be handled on the desktop in a virtual environment,’ said Hickey.

‘And now sales of music files can go directly into the SAP system.’