"The new platform withheld a major DDoS attack just days after cutting over."
Australia's number one publisher, Seven West Media, wanted a more stable platform to host their online Content Management System for magazines such as New Idea, Marie Claire, and Home Beautiful (just a few of the total 16 brands).
Recent growth in the digital channel and spikey website traffic put a significant strain on their existing Umbraco CMS hosting platform.
The challenge
One website platform would crash when visitation numbers hit 100,000. The issues reduced engagement, increased page abandonment, and decreased SEO authority. These problems threatened to undermine the company's brands and reputation.
With a royal baby due, the team had to work fast.
The approach
16 magazine brands migrated to AWS with automated deployment pipelines.
A combined team of architects and engineers from Kablamo, AWS and Seven West Media worked together to plan and migrate the organisation to a vastly improved AWS environment.
Within eight weeks, New Idea and Home Beautiful were cutover to run live on AWS. The timeline included:
- Pre-production environments
- Automated continuous delivery pipelines
- Container orchestration
- Training and documentation for internal engineers
- Repeatable migration frameworks for remaining 14 platforms
Results
The new AWS platform withheld a major DDoS attack (500% spike in traffic) just days after cutting over. Audience traffic expanded by 24%, and there are no issues when visitor numbers hit over 200,000 a day.
Looking forward
With almost zero downtime and no effect on user experience, Seven West Media now avoids revenue losses and damage to their reputation with readers and advertisers. The digital team now has more time and knowledge to research, evaluate and strategise around new technologies and digital products.
