Passoker Optimizes Online Betting with Reduced Testing and Development Times and the Ability to Better Assimilate High-Volume, Real-time Data
 
 

Passoker Optimizes Online Betting with Reduced Testing and Development Times and the Ability to Better Assimilate High-Volume, Real-time Data

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Passoker was founded by Stuart Carr and former England soccer international player Viv Anderson to capitalize on the growing, international, in-play, betting market. Passoker delivers an innovative, multiplatform gaming solution that allows players to place bets on the results of sporting and other events. Players place their bets during the event, not before, as is customary with the traditional, sports-gambling model.

Players can place bets on what they believe will happen next in a wide range of live sporting events. They also can lay wagers on plot developments in television programs, such as soaps and reality shows, as well as on political debates and election results.

Passoker partners with a sports data provider that archives and distributes historical information, critical to gamers’ abilities to instantly assess events. The partner collects, packages, and distributes information on some 60,000 events each year, from more than 30 different sports in approximately 70 countries. The incoming data from this service is used to determine the options available for each of the many events tracked on Passoker’s betting platform, enabling bettors to wager on eventualities, such as the next goal, free kick, or penalty in a particular soccer match.

The size of the global sports betting market―between US$350 billion and US$400 billion per year―illustrates the need for database technology that can cope with exceptionally high volumes of data, providing for high availability, rapid scaling, and guaranteed ordering of events. The partnership allows Passoker to cover a wide variety of sports, receiving in-play and real-time XML database feeds to drive players’ gaming experiences.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Passoker

  • “Passoker needed a database technology that could rapidly receive the XML files on which its gaming platform relies, and then quickly process those files for relevance. Also essential were high availability, rapid scaling, and guaranteed ordering of events, all which Oracle NoSQL Database delivered.” – James Anthony, Chief Technology Officer, Passoker

  • Provide a platform for real-time, sports-data feeds to support the company’s rapidly expansion of in-play, betting offerings
  • Deploy a scalable, efficient, and highly resilient way of dealing with a stream of incoming data on upcoming and in-progress sports matches and other events
  • Enable the platform to receive XML-format, sports-data feeds and rapidly process them for relevance
  • Reduce development times and simplify day-to-day administration for the data infrastructure that supporst in-play betting operations
  • Scale-out the platform as demand grows and players take up gaming in greater numbers

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Deployed Oracle NoSQL Database as the new platform supporting the company’s gaming solutions, reducing development and implementation times by 75% (saving 30 to 50 days) over other database options, due to Oracle NoSQL’s built-in, configurable replication capabilities
  • Enabled Passoker to deploy sports-data feeds sooner than expected, thanks to the 75% time savings on development and implementation, allowing more time for functional testing and data-quality assurance
  • Allowed more time for application development and integration, without worries of basic technological issues
  • Simplified day-to-day administration through a graphical-user/command-line interface, which is essential for the small team administering a complex product, based on high volumes of unpredictable real-time events
  • Simplified rapid correlation between in-progress events and gaming options on the platform, due to the system’s higher efficiency and performance, as compared to relational database management solutions
  • Accelerated adoption of standards-based IT, since Passoker could add off-the-shelf equipment that supports standards, such as Java, to the existing architecture with minimal adaptation needed
  • Improved operational efficiency, due to ongoing commercial support, so that instead of relying on open source documentation for support, Passoker can log service requests for problem resolution into the My Oracle Support system
  • Eliminated daily maintenance related to single-node points-of-failure by moving to Oracle NoSQL Database, which is designed to be resilient and hands-off, thus minimizing IT support costs
  • Used the new system’s compatibility with the existing Oracle MySQL Database environment to enable cross-referencing with existing data on discrete keys and ensure continuous data streams for the betting platform
  • Accelerated time to market for the company’s betting platforms, due to faster-than-anticipated integration

Why Oracle

The Oracle solutions’ easy integration, compatibility with existing skill sets, and key-value data model allowed Passoker to rapidly process data for consistency, relevance, and accuracy. Passoker considered open source solutions, such as Voldemort, but chose Oracle NoSQL, in part, because it was integrated with Oracle Linux, Oracle’s MySQL, and Oracle Glassfish Server, which were already in place in Passoker’s environment. In addition, the solution offered professional support instead of having to rely on internet searches to find answers.

Oracle NoSQL Database’s scalability as demand grows is also essential, as is high availability and performance to support 24/7 gaming operations.

Oracle NoSQL provided the performance and scalability required to meet the company’s extreme requirements. For example, on the last day of the Premiership soccer season, 20 teams were playing 10 simultaneous matches, as well as all the other leagues which Passoker tracks in real time. Each match would have 400 or more events (where events were individual actions during the match that could shape the result) and Passoker would need to identify and track a specific 35 to 45 of these events, based on the different bets being placed in the system at any moment. Oracle NoSQL Database scaled out to handle all these events according to demand.

“Moving to Oracle NoSQL Database allowed us to easily replicate, scale, and manage our data infrastructure, significantly reducing our development and testing times,” said James Anthony, chief technology officer, Passoker.

Partner

e-DBA, an Oracle Platinum Partner and expert in Oracle technology, led the implementation of and provides ongoing support for Passoker's Oracle NoSQL Database solution. e-DBA scoped Passoker's requirements, taking account of the unusually high volumes of real-time data that it must assimilate to provide users with the best possible online betting experience.