Mantalus Helps Sportsbet Migrate to AWS

After Sportsbet observed traffic spikes, the bookmaker decided to move its core betting application environment OpenBet to Amazon Web Services. The bookmaker worked together with Mantalus to complete the migration.

Traffic Spikes Prompted Sportsbet to Migrate to AWS

The Australian online bookmaker Sportsbet has announced that it worked closely with the cloud consulting company Mantalus to migrate its core betting application environment, OpenBet, to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Sportsbet together with the Mantalus in-house team worked on the migration of 78 application components written using Tcl, C/C++, and Java programming languages, to transition to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

“We had to find new technology to enable the business to grow and innovate with speed.”

Simon Noonan, chief information officer, Sportsbet

The bookmaker Sportsbet has seen the need to transition its application environment to AWS after observing traffic spikes around the two-week annual Spring Racing Carnival. In light of the spikes it observed, the bookmaker had to increase its platform capabilities to support up to 35,000 bets per minute.

Simon Noonan, chief information officer at Sportsbet, said that traffic spikes were also observed during the Melbourne Cup and the circumstances became “increasingly difficult”. This prompted the bookmaker to scale up its operations and seek new technology that can enable the business to grow.

Sportsbet Scales to 50,000 Bets per Minute, Improves Performance

Noonan outlined that the company was able to complete the migration of two data centers to AWS in 24 months. This happened 12 months faster than initially anticipated. The operator proved that with the help of AWS, it was able to scale to 50,000 bets per minute if needed. Here, Noonan added that this achievement was impossible without being present on AWS.

Furthermore, Sportbet outlined that it created its pricing and personalization models based on 10 billion rows of data while using AWS. “We use our models to generate prices during games, depending on the stage of the game,” explained Noonan. Based on the outcome and probability of the simulations, Sportsbet places a price depending on the risk it is willing to take.

According to Sportbet’s CIO, the migration of OpenBet to AWS also improved the performance of the application. As a result, the customers have observed a 30-40% increase in performance speed, added Noonan.

Another key organizational change that Sportbet introduced is to keep the software development in-house instead of using 3rd-party suppliers. The result of this, according to Noonan is a 60% increase in the delivery speed of new software features. In conclusion, the bookmaker revealed that it has launched the AWS Cloud Academy which provides training on AWS services for Sportsbet employees.