Paddy Power Betfair Bets on Infoblox to Modernize its Network Architecture
“We’ve never had any issues with spikes because Infoblox just works so well. But where our Infoblox solution has really made a positive contribution to the business is, first, in allowing us to accommodate growth—we’ve expanded by leaps and bounds over the past five years—and second, by enabling us to automate key networking operation.”
Paddy Power Betfair is an Irish and UK bookmaker primarily based in Dublin and London. In 2016 Paddy Power merged with Betfair to create Paddy Power Betfair, and now operates as Flutter Entertainment, though the Paddy Power and Betfair brands remain in place alongside other Flutter properties, including Pokerstars, Sky Bet, Sportsbet (Australia), FOX Bet (USA), FanDuel (USA), TVG (USA) and Adjarabet (Georgia).
The Challenge – Handling Network Traffic Spikes
The nature of the gaming business is highly cyclical, with activity at Paddy Power retail locations and online operations spiking dramatically during high profile games and races. In the lead up to major sporting events such as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Grand National or Royal Ascot Cup horse races, major Premiership or European football matches, network traffic can dramatically increase over average daily rates. With stability and availability having such an important role, the Paddy Power Betfair infrastructure teams decided to make an investment in a powerful state-of-the-art solution from Infoblox.
Customer: Paddy Power Betfair / Flutter Entertainment
Industry: Gaming / Bookmaking
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Initiative: Accommodating network traffic spikes spurred by major sporting events, Automating network management tasks and virtual machine provisioning
Outcomes: Flawless business continuity and application uptime to deliver seamless customer experiences, Automated core network processes to launch new customer services
Solution: Infoblox Grid, Infoblox DDI NIOS, Considering Infoblox DNS Traffic Control (DNS)
Progressing Toward Full Network Automation
Infoblox has proven to be an ideal solution for PPB, enabling the company to handle traffic spikes around the biggest sporting events of the year. Gianlorenzo Cipparrone, Deliver Manager for Systems Management at Paddy Power Betfair, states that “We’ve never had any issues with spikes because Infoblox just works so well. But where our Infoblox solution has really made a positive contribution to the business is, first, in allowing us to accommodate growth—we’ve expanded by leaps and bounds over the past five years—and second, by enabling us to automate key networking operations.”
The Infoblox DDI solution has a full-featured graphical user interface (GUI) that makes it easy for even relatively inexperienced administrators to execute highly complex network operations. More sophisticated users, however, often prefer to access the solution’s advanced features by engaging through Infoblox’s Web-based application programming interface (API). With Infoblox API automation, Cipparrone and the Infrastructure teams can quickly add new server instances, provision new apps to support new lines of business, integrate with other systems and automate routine load balancing tasks. “Having the ability to fire off an API script to stand up a new virtual machine to support something like incoming traffic spikes from a major event saves us time and money,” says Cipparrone. “Automating tasks that would otherwise require team coordination gives us the flexibility to proactively address evolving priorities as needed, which is a real business advantage.”
Cipparrone also points out that he and his team are in the process of considering implementing Infoblox’s DNS Traffic Control (DTC) solution as a valuable addition in addressing the challenges facing the Paddy Power Betfair team. An integrated DNS Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) solution, Infoblox DTC ensures smooth customer experiences across all Paddy Power Betfair services by delivering business continuity through reliable application uptime, performance and seamless failover. “By efficiently distributing network traffic loads across our diverse environment, DTC gives us confidence that our business-critical applications are always there for our customers as needed,” says Cipparrone.
Maintaining Strong Growth into the Future
Beyond the excellent performance of its Infoblox solutions over the years, the Paddy Power Betfair team cites a superior customer experience as a key factor in the long-running relationship. Having had to concentrate in recent years on integrating Paddy Power Betfair operations and launching the new Flutter Entertainment brands, Cipparrone is looking forward to new challenges in the years ahead.
For More Information
To learn more about how you can improve your organization’s network reliability, simplify network management with a unified platform for your core network services and more, visit the Infoblox website or try Infoblox for free today.