Digital Chocolate Success Story
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Joyent Cloud
- Joyent SmartOS
- Joyent KVM
Tech Stack
- PHP
- Percona
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Digital Chocolate is a leading provider of social games played across social networks and mobile platforms. The company’s top hits include Galaxy Life, Millionaire City, Zombie Lane, Army Attack, Crazy Penguin Wars, Tower Bloxx, and Rollercoaster Rush. The iPhone version of Rollercoaster Rush was a Top Five download in the Apple App Store – and is part of a franchise that has achieved more than 15 million downloads. Digital Chocolate was the number one software company in App Store downloads in 2009, and was one of the fastest-growing publishers of Facebook social games with virtual goods in 2010. The company was founded in 2003 by Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, and has 300 employees. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Digital Chocolate works with 200 leading web and mobile channel partners in 80 countries, and has offices in Finland, Spain, and India.
The Challenge
Digital Chocolate, a leading provider of social games, was facing a challenge with its growing daily active users (DAUs) base. As the DAU base grew, so did the company's infrastructure costs. Initially, supporting the explosive DAU growth was the company's primary focus. However, as the business evolved and the complexity of supporting games increased, it became clear that Digital Chocolate required a more flexible solution to accommodate its needs. The company needed to ensure that its costs per DAU didn't exceed its revenue per DAU. With Digital Chocolate's incumbent cloud infrastructure provider, sudden bursts of bandwidth usage often drove up costs, jeopardizing the profitability of some games. The company also needed to ensure maximum performance and adaptability to its needs.
The Solution
Joyent approached Digital Chocolate with a cloud architecture design that would offer unparalleled efficiency and performance while reducing the company's infrastructure costs by 50% or more. Savings like these would allow Digital Chocolate to devote more of its resources to developing games, not just maintaining the infrastructure. After a 60-day test, Digital Chocolate began migrating its entire game portfolio to Joyent. Joyent Cloud delivered the reliability and quality of service Digital Chocolate had hoped for, while streamlining the company's infrastructure footprint. With Joyent, Digital Chocolate gained cost predictability, deep visibility “under the hood,” and granular control over the exact dials it wanted to control.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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