Adopting serverless application architecture to build a modern racing data platform for Mediality Racing
Medality Racing engaged Cevo to assist with creating a new horse racing data platform for their most critical business application, the Mediality Racing Platform, on AWS. The aim of the engagement was to leverage AWS Managed Services and serverless application architecture to provide a fault tolerant, scalable and cost optimised platform.
Co-Create
Cevo NexusTM solution
Racing
Industry
Mediality, formed in 2020 after the sale of Australian Associated Press (AAP), offers diverse media solutions to amplify and enhance news and information across publishing platforms. Mediality comprises four key business units: Mediality Racing, Pagemasters, Mediaverse and Medianet.
Mediality Racing consumes and delivers data on thoroughbred races to both internal and external customers. Internally, customers leverage the data to produce racing form guides and other similar publications. Externally, Mediality Racing provides data to dozens of customers, ranging from small, private punters, to Australia’s largest bookmakers.
Business challenge
Mediality Racing’s existing system had been built over an extended period of time using custom tools and scripts, meaning that any enhancements resulted in a complicated, lengthy and costly process.
With customers requesting more modern ways of accessing data, business stakeholders expressed a desire to build a new racing database platform that would better integrate with the wider business, match competitor’s offerings and better service its customers.
Solution
Mediality Racing leveraged Cevo’s AWS experts to build a new racing data application using AWS native technologies and best practices. The platform aims to deliver greater efficiencies by consolidating the functionality of existing legacy systems within a single modern application, including a user interface to facilitate efficient data entry and stewardship. The result was a simplified, modern application that allows for greater control, accuracy and accountability over data entry operations. Existing data was migrated to a Cloud Native database, with an API developed to support application development and data delivery to customers.
First, Cevo conducted a three week foundation phase to establish a best practice AWS landing zone, develop a detailed solution architecture and finalise a migration plan. Then, Cevo conducted eight, two week development sprints using the Scrum Agile methodology to deliver the MVP release of the new racing data platform into Mediality’s production environment in AWS.
The use of an agile scrum framework for this project enabled Cevo’s scrum master and Mediality product owner to provide the team delegation of authority and the ability to make decisions quickly. The core scrum team were therefore able to disrupt the status quo of the current business processes of using multiple systems and manual tasks. They worked directly with the users to get input about their day to day pain points and their dreams for the new system to add true business value and create a real drive for the users.
The delivery of the new racing data platform comprised a mix of Cloud Native technologies from AWS including:
- AWS Landing Zone
- Amplify
- Lambda and Step Functions
- API Gateway
- S3
- SQS Queues
- DocumentDB (MSSQL to DocumentDB Migration)
- Frontend – Vue
“I want to express my gratitude to every person involved in the Centaur project. The combination of Cevo’s creating thinking and professional skills, and Mediality’s innovation and business intuition resulted in a very successful engagement that has garnered positive feedback and recognition. It was a fantastic experience to ultimately build a new platform that will lead to greater efficiencies not only within our business, but for our customers.”
Tim Mansour
Technology Initiatives Manager, Mediality
Outcomes
Communication within the team throughout the entire project was fantastic, both within Cevo and between the Cevo and Mediality Racing teams, resulting in a great team dynamic and an effective working environment. Staff worked in a mix of on-site and remote collaboration. This working environment lead to the output of a new racing data platform, which delivered benefits including:
- Automation of previously manual workflows – Saving end users hours each day. Examples include:
- Automation of gear changes workflow – Previously, the process for gear changes was manual and time consuming, as each horse required manual entry. Automation of this workflow saves users up to more than an hour per day
- Automation of registrations – More than 1,500 data updates to horse profiles and registrations, trainer details, silks changes, and more, are made daily. While most processes are automatically updated in the database, some elements didn’t transfer, resulting in up to 45 minutes of manual data entry daily. The new system completes this automatically
- Consolidation into one system – As opposed to the previous three separate systems
- Streamlined delivery of data to customers – Creation of an API layer can be used to access data on demand, enhancing the customer experience
- Single centralised platform – Simplified, consolidated functionality present in existing legacy systems to increase productivity of users
- A single data model – Consolidation of existing duplicate data structures from multiple applications
- Streamline application development – Allow for data access within the organisation through creation of an API layer
- Utilise cloud native technologies – To develop, deploy and mature the platform
- Apply AWS best practices – Including source control, CI/CD pipeline for automated build, deployment, updates, and rollbacks
“Mediality Racing banded together with D6 and Cevo to modernise our ways of working and build a new racing database platform. Not only does the new application provide fast, accurate and secure data to our customers, but the automation will save our staff countless hours which were previously spent on manual and time consuming processes. This project was, without question, the most successful software collaboration I have witnessed in my 12 years as CEO of AAP and now Mediality thanks to the creative thinking, professional skills, innovation, business intuition and magnificent teamwork from D6, Cevo and Mediality Racing.”
Bruce Davidson
CEO, Mediality
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