Using Oracle Cloud, onthelive brings remote learning to the masses
The Korean edtech company uses OCI, NoSQL, and MySQL to expand access to its video learning platform and give users a better customer experience.
“We built a new AI dataset based on MySQL HeatWave and were impressed by the performance. We were also pleased to save 50% of our costs after migrating from AWS.”
Business challenges
A Korean edtech company, onthelive gives students and teachers an adaptive method of learning and teaching with a real-time, two-way video service. Its platform can be launched through a web browser without separate software or applications. The uninterrupted communication allows teachers to freely interact with students in a remote learning environment.
The company’s platform launched in 2020, helping to address the educational hardships caused by the pandemic. However, onthelive’s leadership wanted to enhance the platform’s capabilities and expand its user base beyond South Korea’s borders.
The existing on-premises technology supported roughly 10,000 concurrent users, so the company sought a more robust, scalable, and secure infrastructure to support its overseas expansion. The company also needed a way to efficiently manage the large amount of data expected from the growth. As a disruptive newcomer to the market, the key considerations were cost-effectiveness and ease of management. Additionally, the platform would require high performance and flexibility for users, so teachers and students could participate in lessons without interruption and quickly find relevant content.
Oracle NoSQL has proven invaluable in ensuring our data remains highly available and secure. We’re grateful to have such reliable, powerful technology at our disposal.
Why onthelive chose Oracle
After assessing several top players in the market, onthelive selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for its superior price-performance, flexibility, and security. It was also the most cost-effective choice, allowing the company to scale instances for a growing number of users while being charged only for usage. This was crucial because onthelive’s service has defined hours of operations, and the savings could be reinvested back into enhancing the platform’s capabilities. On top of that, the high OCI Compute performance would help ensure a consistently smooth user experience.
Similarly, onthelive realized the importance of adopting Oracle NoSQL Database Cloud Service and Oracle MySQL HeatWave Database Service. Both would be key in centralizing large volumes of data in a secure location, cataloging learning content for users, ensuring availability and performance, and allowing for quick access to the tools within the company’s learning platform.
By implementing OCI, onthelive scaled its platform to accommodate up to 200,000 concurrent users—a 20X increase compared to the previous environment.
Results
After migrating to OCI, onthelive could accommodate up to 200,000 concurrent users. Before, its on-premises infrastructure limited the platform to only about 10,000 concurrent users. This improvement gave the company the foundation it needed to expand overseas and provide more customers with opportunities to conduct remote non-face-to-face learning.
The price-performance of OCI was 3X better than its closest competitors. This meant onthelive could offer high performance for its customers while it saved money to reinvest in improving the platform’s capabilities. Managing the virtual network, organizing cloud resources with compartments, and changing instance shapes was easy and intuitive, thanks to OCI.
The company also used Oracle NoSQL to help manage the spike in data volume. The service’s on-demand scaling, automated security capabilities, and high performance were vital for handling the large amount of data from the increase in users. Critically, this helped onthelive to centralize all JSON data and offer rapid response time for students and teachers to gain quick, interactive access to the learning platform.
In addition, onthelive used Oracle MySQL HeatWave to consolidate the metadata of online education services in the platform, which was essential for content cataloging. This made it easier for users to search and find relevant content, improving the overall learning experience.
Partners
To undergo its Oracle Cloud transformation, onthelive selected Megazone, an Oracle Partner and the largest cloud managed service provider in South Korea. Megazone continues to assist with managing onthelive’s IT resources, giving the company more time to focus on further developing its video learning service.
About the customer
Based in South Korea, onthelive provides students and teachers with an easy-to-use, interactive video service for remote learning, presentations, lectures, and more.