Buffalo Studios, a subsidiary of Caesars Interactive Entertainment (CIE), has millions of monthly active users. In the case of Bingo Blitz, the company processes approximately 10,000 events per second and over 100 gigabytes (GB) of data daily and expects that number to continue to increase.
“Our industry in general is extremely data-driven and we make content, marketing and product decisions after reviewing reams of data and analytics,” said Barry Sohl, Chief Technology Officer, Buffalo Studios. “But before it can be of value to us, we have to turn our data into actionable insights. That’s why it’s critical that our data is accurate and gets into our data warehouse in a timely manner.”
Prior to using Talend, getting the data into the warehouse used to be clunky for Buffalo Studios. The company used a mixture of custom code and Python scripts, but the results were far from ideal. The company sought a solution that would provide greater flexibility at the data integration layer, so it could quickly add new data instrumentation points, and retrieve critical data necessary to make smarter business decisions.
Buffalo Studios searched for a best-of-breed vendor that could meet its need for more flexibility and recognized that Talend offered a more mature and full-featured development environment than other solutions in the marketplace. The company considered a handful of options but during a proof-of-concept, Talend delivered the most successful results. Buffalo Studios also liked that Talend was Java-based, enabling its team to leverage an existing skill set and use Talend out of the box, in conjunction with its own existing custom Java code. Today, Buffalo Studios is using Talend Enterprise Big Data to achieve the flexibility it previously lacked.
“We need to measure the effectiveness of our features – whether positive or negative – in near real time,” added Sohl. “The easier it is for us to instrument the data, the better it is for our Business Intelligence team to use. Talend is helping us streamline the process, achieve more agility, and get more value from our data.”
In addition, because Buffalo Studios is spending less time fixing data integration issues, its engineers are able to be more productive, build new and innovative technology, and drive customer growth and loyalty.
“Big data is at the foundation of all the megatrends happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to gaming,” said Mike Sheridan, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Talend. “Our team is thrilled that Buffalo Studios has chosen Talend Enterprise Big Data to improve their customers’ gaming experience, streamline processes and gain a competitive advantage.”