Tata Comm. Case Study: Powering 67 million unique users at Formula1.com

On race day, every second counts. With enthusiasts around the world glued to Formula1.com, the smallest technical glitch or performance issue could have a huge impact on both fans and the Formula One Management organisation.

Formula1.com is the official website of Formula 1®, representing the brand around the world.

The website is a highly interactive and engaging platform for fans that depend on it to stay updated on all things F1®. While the site sees substantial traffic on any given day, the traffic to the site increases exponentially on race days. These typically see spikes of up to 100 times the usual number of visitors accessing the site, using multiple devices including laptops, handheld devices such as tablets, and mobile phones; as well as from multiple platforms and web browsers. This diversity demands that the web systems provide consistent performance and user experience across a multitude of network bandwidths and rich media-capable devices.


With an ever-increasing number of fans using the website, Formula One Management challenged Tata Communications to deliver a flawless experience for Formula1.com and provide fans a more innovative web experience in the future. The requirement was for a content acceleration that provided:

Consistent delivery of content to users accessing the site from anywhere in the world, on even slow connections (such as 2G or dialup) Instant-on delivery and highly reduced latency



The solution

As the Content Delivery Network Provider for Formula 1®, Tata Communications has designed and integrated a complete bundle of services onto one platform for improved synergy. This provides Formula One Management with a global Content Delivery Network (CDN), global IP network and on-site engineering, all from a single supplier for consistency and flexibility.

This built-in flexibility is demonstrated in the Formula1.com website, which can easily scale - from handling off-season traffic, to coping with millions of hits during a race weekend and still deliver a consistent level of performance. During the race weekend, a vast amount of real-time data is shared with up to seven million simultaneous viewers in over 188 countries. Tata Communications is able to deliver that content to a variety of devices, including PCs, tablets and mobile devices.

The inside view...

“With such a challenging and dynamic client, failure / work-around was never an option. Our solutions are constantly being updated and expanded, which has meant that the customer - with its fast-moving requirements - has benefited from these enhancements throughout the process. It’s a win-win situation when something we have designed gets implemented smoothly and meets the customer’s objectives.” - Mangesh Pimpalkhare, VP, Product Management - CDN, Tata Communications

The customer speaks...

“Our website is critical to bringing Formula 1® to a global audience, keeping them in touch with the latest action from races around the world.

The ability for Formula1.com content to be delivered quickly and at a high quality is of paramount importance. It is also the defining factor when we are deciding on the features and content of Formula1.com. Consistently high quality global access is the key to giving us the maximum possible freedom to upgrade and introduce new features without compromise due to the technical limitations of delivery. Tata Communications is there to provide us with a CDN solution for Formula1.com that helps us to offer the best experience to our users wherever they are.” - Eddie Baker, Chief Technical Consultant, Formula One group.

Benefits
  • Global quality. Fans around the world, from India to Brazil, enjoy a consistent quality and website experience thanks to the Tata Communications global Tier 1 network, global CDN presence and broad device support
  • Instant insight. Detail is extremely important and that is why Formula1.com enjoys near real-time fast facts and figures about how its website is being used. This sort of insight will help drive a joint programme of improvements to enrich the online experience for every fan

Comments