Betfair embraces virtualisation to improve IT utilisation and increase speed of application deployment, choosing ControlCircle for associated datacentre services

o   New utility computing model means time to market for new applications now up to 6 weeks faster
o   Virtualisation means IT assets are better exploited with IT spending curtailed as over provisioning is avoided and less power consumed
o   Separate greenfield datacentre established within weeks by ControlCircle so that new virtual environments can be set up and tested

September 3, 2008 – ControlCircle, the datacentre services company, today announced that it has been selected by Betfair to provide datacentre space and collocation services as the hugely successful sports exchange commences virtualisation trials.

With more than a million registered customers today, 433,000 of them active (up 57% on the year before), Betfair handles more than 300 bets a second and 5 million transactions per day – more than all the European stock markets combined.  It has taken around 1,000 man years to build the Java-written bespoke exchange and an investment of some $150 million. 

Nick Laflin, Betfair’s utility computing programme manager, says, “In the past, every time we launched a new application, new physical hardware would be deployed.  Datacentres are often notoriously under utilised with some server resources remaining idle for 85% of the time.  This is due to over provisioning where more hardware is bought to handle peak traffic demand.  We’re looking carefully at how virtualisation can help avoid this while increasing flexibility and saving costs for the company.”

Using server virtualisation software, Betfair’s goal is to rapidly provision new virtual machines and allocate capacity to support specific events for example, or allow applications and services to be easily moved as required between its datacentres located around the world.  Laflin adds, “The old model was like an arms race.  As new applications were launched, it meant more and more physical hardware and more and more datacentre space and more and more cost.  And given Betfair’s exponential growth this is not sustainable.  Virtualisation will allow us to sweat assets and increase efficiency.”

To facilitate this Betfair selected ControlCircle to provide datacentre space and associated services so that a trial environment could be set up to test systems and applications using a virtual model, without impacting operational infrastructure. 

ControlCircle is providing space at Global Switch London II to facilitate these test projects. Laflin says, “We’d have been too constrained trying to test virtualised systems in a production datacentre environment so ControlCircle has quickly given us greenfield space and the flexibility to do this, in the timescales we wanted which was within a month.”

ControlCircle was chosen as Betfair’s datacentre partner in March 2008 given its reputation and work with Tradefair, the new financial betting exchange launched by the Betfair Group in June 2008. 

Initially ControlCircle is providing Betfair seven racks for this test environment (four for networking technology and three for servers), cabling and installation services, and connectivity to other Betfair infrastructure also located within Global Switch London II but on a different floor. 

Having implemented production systems abroad Betfair is now virtualising various API[1] test systems, used by third parties who write and develop software which link into its sports exchange.  This allows companies or individuals to review how changes, additional functionality or new software will behave in a live context. 

Laflin says, “On average, we expect to have 10 virtual machines running on one physical server and are currently working on physical to virtual migrations and assessing how systems subsequently perform. While it is early days in terms of virtualisation projects within production, we have an 18 month roadmap and expect to virtualise as many systems as is practicable.”

From an IT operational perspective, virtualisation will make moving services between Betfair’s datacentres much easier – as virtual machines can be copied quickly and bought up in different locations – especially as Betfair is creating a standardised model for hardware in its datacentres encompassing common network, server and security designs.  Similarly, Betfair will virtualise systems currently used for disaster recovery purposes thereby avoiding IT sitting around doing nothing on the off chance there is a failure. 

Laflin says, “Historically, each application was designed around the hardware needed.  This meant it was difficult to forecast datacentre space required and the time to market was slower than we’d have liked as hardware had to be ordered and then configured.  With the virtual model, you just deploy a virtual machine on standardised infrastructure and we estimate a saving of about 6 weeks per project in terms of delivery timeframe. IT becomes just like a utility in this respect.  You pretty much turn it on and off as you need. ”

Laflin concludes, “Working for Betfair is a challenge as we want everything in real time.  ControlCircle has been particularly accommodating, got us the space quickly and we’ve been very impressed with their level of detail and quality of work.”

Damian Milkins, ControlCircle’s chief executive officer, says, “As we have close relationships with all the main datacentre providers, we can quickly help clients with the size of space they require, with the flexibility that they can scale up as required, all carefully supported by our expert technical staff.  We’re delighted that, based on our work with Tradefair, Betfair has now selected us, meaning we are now a trusted datacentre services partner supporting the whole Group.”

[1] Application Programming Interface