UK Gambling Company bet365 Selects SwiftStack

Bet365 Group Limited, an online gambling company, announced its move into object storage with the implementation of SwiftStack, Inc.

The aim of the deployment is to reduce the complexity and cost of managing the massive amount of data that is generated by the business.

“As our data footprint continues to grow on a massive scale, it’s becoming more challenging to store, access and manage,” said James Nightingale, principal systems architect, bet365. “We currently have over 3PB of block storage on SAN and NAS systems. It’s an expensive way of doing things and challenging to scale.“

After a proof of concept, SwiftStack was chosen because of the simplicity of the solution. The initial deployment is to be hosted across two of bet365’s primary datacentres.

“We looked at a few alternatives but felt that SwiftStack’s laser focus on object storage best suited our needs. By adding more functionality or by including object storage in existing solutions, other vendors had made their products less effective and overcomplicated,” said Nightingale.

bet365 is already looking to scale this out to other core datacentres, which is where the simplicity of the underlying SwiftStack architecture really pays off. Other products tested by the company, didn’t allow for expansion across multiple sites and regions, without significant complexity and cost burdens.

“The SwiftStack platform can grow with the business, when and where the business needs it,” said Nightingale.

The move to object storage will not only give the company greater access to and control of its varied data sets but also enable bet365 to leverage the cost efficiencies of commodity hardware and open source software.

“Our SwiftStack solution means we no longer need to use enterprise grade servers and software. This is the first time that bet365 will host a production system on commodity hardware with open source load balancer technology,” said Nightingale.

In addition to its SAN and NAS systems, bet365 has traditionally written a large quantity of its data to tape and stored it offsite. Once offsite, it’s a real challenge to access. Initially the SwiftStack solution will ensure that bet365’s data can be stored online where it can be accessed and managed by the infrastructure team.

“Today, this is very much an infrastructure initiative. However, we are certain that as the wider organisation engages and benefits from the new solution, we will build further use cases across the business,” said Nightingale

The SwiftStack solution is expected to go live in the third quarter of 2016.

“The most demanding new web applications with millions of concurrent users simply require a new breed of storage for their data,” said Joe Arnold, founder and CPO, SwiftStack. “We are always pleased to work with innovative organizations at the vanguard of technology, and are honored to have been selected as the object storage solution for bet365’s platform.“