The Nationwide Tv Awards (NTAs) is a prestigious awards ceremony within the UK that celebrates excellence in tv programming. Thought of one of the distinguished occasions within the British tv business, the awards recognise excellent performances, productions, and programmes throughout totally different tv genres. The NTAs are distinctive in that winners are chosen by the British public by varied voting strategies, together with on-line, phone, and postal voting. The outcomes are then offered dwell on ITV.
For the previous 4 years, the NTAs have entrusted Hyve Managed Hosting with a vital job: sustaining a strong infrastructure for on-line votingsystem. The problem resides in dealing with the surge in visitors throughout peak voting intervals main as much as the ceremony. In 2023, Hyve wanted to make sure a seamless expertise for each member of the British public who needed to forged their vote.
Leveraging its experience in cloud know-how to ship a scalable and dependable resolution, Hyve supplied safe and dependable server infrastructure to host the NTAs’ on-line voting platform. Hyve additionally carried out a dynamic scaling technique to robotically alter assets based mostly on real-time visitors calls for, making certain clean operation even throughout peak voting intervals.
The issue:
Yearly, the NTAs expertise a major surge in web site visitors throughout the voting window within the lead-up to the ceremony, as tens of millions of viewers try to take part on-line. This annual visitors spike can overload the servers, inflicting crashes and hindering the voting course of. Such downtime can severely affect the system’s credibility and lift questions in regards to the equity of your complete award ceremony.
Overwhelmed servers battle to deal with an inflow of visitors, leading to sluggish loading instances, error messages, and, finally, the positioning crashing fully. These points don’t simply go away voters fuming – they discourage participation, probably undermining each the general pleasure and the legitimacy of the awards. Downtime throughout voting also can harm the NTAs’ fame, resulting in damaging publicity and eroding belief with viewers and business insiders.
Along with the quick affect on the voting course of, server overload and downtime pose logistical challenges for the NTAs and its broadcast companion, Indigo Tv. Delays in voting outcomes and disruptions within the dwell broadcast of the ceremony can disrupt scheduling and manufacturing plans, affecting the general viewer expertise and the success of the occasion.
So, making certain the reliability and scalability of the voting platform was paramount for the NTAs to uphold the integrity of the awards, preserve viewer confidence, and ship a seamless voting expertise for tens of millions of individuals throughout the nation.
The answer:
To deal with this problem, Hyve devised a bespoke load-balanced cloud platform designed to deal with the anticipated enhance in web site visitors throughout the voting interval.
Final 12 months, server assets had been elevated by 24 instances their normal ranges inside the two voting home windows to accommodate the elevated heavy visitors from the members of the British public collaborating within the votes. Assets had been then dialled again to normal ranges as soon as visitors subsided in between voting phases, to chop out utilizing pointless cloud assets and due to this fact cut back prices for the client.
In addition to making a bespoke, scalable cloud resolution for the NTAs to ensure 100% community uptime, Hyve’s assist workforce was additionally available to constantly monitor the servers even after assets had been raised to new ranges. Hyve set in place alert thresholds for the servers as a precaution ought to the NTAs web site expertise unprecedented ranges of visitors and want to extend assets.
The flexibility to scale cloud assets dynamically on digital servers additionally helped streamline the voting interval for Indigo Tv as nothing new wanted to be launched past their present {hardware}, which means that new logins or IPs weren’t required when voting commenced.
The problem:
The primary problem was to anticipating visitors surges. To handle this, Hyve set threshold alerts for its servers to ramp up assets in response to unprecedented ranges of web site visitors. This proactive method ensured clean voting processes even throughout peak intervals.
The second problem was price administration. To forestall pointless prices, Hyve dialled again server assets as soon as the voting interval ended, making certain assets had been allotted effectively.
Lastly, there was the problem of Indigo’s compatibility. Hyve dynamically scaled cloud assets on digital servers, streamlining the voting course of for Indigo Tv with out requiring new {hardware} or logins.
The end result:
Behind the scenes of the NTAs, a seamless collaboration with Hyve ensured a clean voting course of all through the ceremony. The occasion celebrated a various vary of winners throughout classes, honouring the most effective of British tv. Kim Turberville, the NTAs’ govt producer, expressed her appreciation for Hyve’s essential contribution to the occasion’s success. This partnership displays Hyve’s dedication to creating tailor-made cloud options, fostering a belief that retains the NTAs workforce coming again 12 months after 12 months.
Need to be taught extra about cybersecurity and the cloud from business leaders? Take a look at Cyber Security & Cloud Expo going down in Amsterdam, California, and London. Discover different upcoming enterprise know-how occasions and webinars powered by TechForge here.
