BUSINESS CASEMarketing Research and Data Analysis

Online Gamers’ Statistics Stored in the Cloud

Agora Games (agoragames.com) hosts online video game competitions and tournaments for amateurs and professionals. Over 60 million Nintendo, SONY, and Xbox gamers worldwide compete in Agora’s game communities, such as Mortal Kombat Online (mortalkombatonline.com). They provide gamers with individual profiles that record and display what they’ve just played, their scores, rankings, achievements, and other statistics (stats).

Huge Professional and Amateur Online Video Game Market The professional and recreational online video games market is huge and growing worldwide. It’s projected to hit $70 billion by 2015, according to market researcher DFC Intelligence (dfcint.com/). Taking into account all game-related spending, industry revenues might exceed $112 billion in 2015, according to Gartner (gartner.com, 2011).

Gamers’ Satisfaction Determines Business Success A game’s online community must perform perfectly or it will fail. If a game’s online performance or reporting is slow or features don’t work correctly, frustrated players leave and rarely return. Since there are many competing games to choose from, online performance is critical to the video game’s success.

Data Management Is Crucial Given the nature of the business and number of customers, Agora’s data storage needs fluctuate unpredictably. Without sufficient data storage capacity, gamers’ performance suffers—and so does their business. But having too much capacity leads to idle capacity, which increases costs. The solution was cloud storage. Criteria for Selecting an Enterprise Cloud Storage Solution Brian Corrigan, Agora’s chief technology officer (CTO), said: “We don’t want to have to manage hardware, but we do need control over the systems.” He evaluated the cloud storage solutions of various vendors based on three criteria.

1. Multi-platform support. The storage solution had to support both Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft Windows platforms. Microsoft Xbox is a leading game console.

2. Guaranteed uptime. Zero hardware downtime is critical to systems supporting online gaming. Agora needed a vendor or service provider that would manage and insure uninterrupted availability. Not all vendors offer guaranteed system uptime.

3. Superior tech support. Agora needed a service provider that was ready and able to fix problems whenever they happened. The CTO and his team selected Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud (terremark.com).The Enterprise Cloud resides in top-tier data centers—that is, data centers that provide the highest standards of security, availability, and power. Backups provide security and availability. Additional server capacity is available without service interruption. The Enterprise Cloud gives Agora complete control over its systems without having to manage hardware and provisioning. The company only pays for what it uses. Now the IT staff can focus on their core competency–building gaming environments.

Questions & Activities

1. Visit and review the Mortal Kombat Online community at mortalkombatonline.com/ and Section 8 at s8stats. timegate.com/xbox. What did you learn about Agora Games’ customers?

2. What factors influence Agora Games’ business performance?

3. Explain how cloud storage can cut Agora’s data storage costs.

4. What changes occurred at Agora Games as a result of investing in enterprise cloud storage?

5. Research two enterprise cloud storage vendors or service providers that provide sufficient information on the Web to assess them meaningfully. Compare and contrast at least four characteristics of thes