Kambi

Managing millions of bets

Achieving an average of 530 million monthly transactions in 2020, Kambi was keen to continue expanding its business, and set out to prepare for potentially explosive growth.

To provide customers with a first-class sports betting experience, Kambi processes vast volumes of transactional data around-the-clock, handling it in accordance with regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions. Facing growing demand for its services, the company looked to strengthen its analytics capabilities and enhance the data warehouse at the heart of its operations.

“Data is at the core of everything we do here at Kambi,” explains Andrew Hedengren, Data Platform Architect at Kambi. “We have a duty to the sports we support and our partners to make sure that we handle transactions rapidly, securely and in compliance with the strict governance frameworks guiding sports betting around the world. With our transaction volumes growing year-on-year, we decided it was time to further enhance the core systems powering our business. Specifically, we targeted a flexible and reliable data warehouse and analytics engine.”

He continues: “Due to the nature of many of the sports we work with, demand on our sportsbook peaks both during games and at key points in the seasonal calendar. Because of this, having the ability to rapidly scale our systems up and down is an essential ingredient in ensuring the profitability of our business over the long term.”

We initially selected Vertica (now part of OpenText™) as we truly felt that it offered the best high-performance analytics environment on the market and provided a broad array of customization options, as well as the ability to operate across complex architectures that handle huge volumes of data. And after using the solution in our organization for nearly a decade, it has proven to be just as robust and reliable as we expected.

Next-generation analytics

To step up its analytics capabilities, Kambi decided to establish a central, on-premises data warehouse for all its mission-critical information using the Analytics Platform.

“We initially selected Vertica (now part of OpenText™) as we truly felt that it offered the best high-performance analytics environment on the market and provided a broad array of customization options, as well as the ability to operate across complex architectures that handle huge volumes of data,” says Andrew Hedengren. “And after using the solution in our organization for nearly a decade, it has proven to be just as robust and reliable as we expected.”

Kambi set up OpenText as its core data warehouse, ingesting data from production databases and the company’s data lake, as well as from third-party external data sources. In addition to housing vast amounts of insight-rich data, OpenText provides Kambi with the ability to create dedicated data marts and star schemas, while offering a wide selection of analytics and financial reporting capabilities.

Andrew Hedengren continues: “Our modular microservices architecture fits perfectly with the Analytics Platform, giving us the flexibility to design and develop key applications without having to redesign our entire IT infrastructure. And the fact that Vertica (now part of OpenText™) can run on almost all commodity hardware is a huge plus too, as it enables us to leverage best-of-breed analytics without having to invest in expensive, specialist hardware.”

He adds: “Another great feature of Vertica (now part of OpenText™) is the built-in time zone support. While programmers might be comfortable analyzing time zones in Coordinated Universal Time [UTC], many business users find it easier to process information in their own time zone. With Vertica (now OpenText), business users can select their preferred time zone and the solution automatically converts the chosen zone from UTC, handling all of the geographical and daylight saving calculations silently in the background.”

Achieving lightning-fast analytics

With OpenText providing a stable, high-performance, flexible data warehouse, Kambi can easily scale to meet growing demand for its services while achieving timely, accurate and granular data analysis.

“By building dedicated data marts for specific analytics functions in Vertica (now part of OpenText™), we can aggregate data much faster and can utilize it for multiple purposes without having to reprocess the data numerous times,” explains Andrew Hedengren. “In stead, with this approach, we can process data once and then roll it up hourly, daily or monthly as needed—helping to reduce compute time, accelerate reporting, and reduce operational costs.”

Today, OpenText is used by a huge number of Kambi’s global team—the company’s selfservice analytics tool has 375 daily users from nearly all business units in the company.

“Our employees are pleased to see just how fast Vertica (now part of OpenText™) can help them answer their business queries,” continues Andrew Hedengren. “For instance, over 55 percent of all queries made in Vertica (now part of OpenText™) are answered in under 10 seconds and the remaining 45 percent are also answered with lightning speed. Ultimately, this helps us to harness insights as soon as they become available.”

Looking ahead, Kambi plans to migrate its onpremises instance of OpenText into the cloud with OpenText Vertica EON Mode: a move that will help the company to unlock even more operational cost savings.

Andrew Hedengren concludes: “Vertica (now part of OpenText™) will always be a key part of our business as we develop and grow in the years ahead. We’re looking forward to seeing how moving Vertica (now part of OpenText™) into the cloud will help us to further enhance our business and enable us to deliver excellent service to our customers.”

Our modular microservices architecture fits perfectly with the Advanced Analytics Platform, giving us the flexibility to design and develop key applications without having to redesign our entire IT infrastructure.