By moving to AWS, Miniclip was able to seize opportunities that may otherwise have passed it by. During the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, Miniclip was able to launch two games instead of just one: Soccer Stars (mobile) and Mini-soccer (web). With Miniclip’s previous data center architecture, it would have taken four weeks to procure hardware, install it, and finally deploy these games. With AWS, Miniclip’s mobile server team was able to reduce the deployment time to four hours. “If we were deploying into our previous data center, I don’t think the team would have met the goal of deploying before the World Cup,” Shanker says. “That allowed us to take advantage of the hype to drive users to the soccer games.”

In addition, by using AWS, Miniclip is able to develop and prototype solutions faster, giving it a distinct performance enhancement after migrating from the datacenters. “By using AWS, we can prototype at a much faster pace than when we were in our data centers,” Shanker says.

After migrating to AWS, Miniclip now experiences availability in the five 9s (99.999 percent). Latency was reduced from 4.5 seconds to 2 seconds. Time to market decreased by 97 percent. Infrastructure costs were reduced by 69 percent, and the manpower required to run the infrastructure was reduced by 66 percent. After migrating to AWS, Miniclip’s operating expenses decreased by 60 percent. Because Miniclip no longer needed to spend money on new hardware, CAPEX fell 75 percent.

AWS powers Miniclip’s ambition to grow in the world of online gaming. Now, with the ability to get games to market faster, Miniclip has become a leader in the industry. The benefits of AWS extend beyond technological performance: AWS also enhances human performance. “It allows us to push a lot more of our operational stuff to our developers, so our developers learn more, which makes them better at what they do,” Shanker says.