Ticketmaster: Using the Cloud Capitalizing on Performance, Analytics, and Data to Deliver Insights

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InsideBIGDATA Guide to Ticketmaster: Using the Cloud Capitalizing on Performance, Analytics, and Data to Deliver Insights

Written by Daniel D. Gutierrez, Managing Editor, insideBIGDATA

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Accelerating Demand for Cloud Services Demand for enterprise cloud services is growing exponentially. A recent Teradata survey indicates that by 2020, 90% of their customers expect to have a hybrid cloud environment—and more than 85% expect to buy analytics as a service. These market needs must be addressed with simple, packaged solutions that combine leading data and analytic software as a service with unprecedented deployment choice and flexibility. Ultimately, these solutions need to free enterprises to focus on how analytic insight can move the needle for their company. According to Gartner, more and more enterprises For enterprises considering a cloud solution, the are demanding that service offerings support topics of security and compliance are essential for hybrid scenarios that incorporate traditional success. A viable solution should include rigorous on-premises technologies as well as new cloud third party audits of as-a-service offerings to technologies, and ultimately establish a hybrid demonstrate compliance with security regulations IT environment 1 Enterprise solutions need to and industry best practices such as ISO 27001, be designed to support this type of modern SOC 1, SOC 2, PCI, and HIPAA. hybrid approach with comprehensive The requisite solutions offer more choice, greater subscription services aligned to customer dexterity, and the ability for enterprises to increase priorities. The solutions also need to support their focus on extracting and applying analytic the same enterprise use cases and workloads insights rather than on managing infrastructure. that are available with on-premises systems, The objective is to increase business agility and though with the advantages of subscription boost focus on data-driven analytic insights that pricing in an as-a-service model. Common use have meaningful business outcomes. cases for companies running their analytic ecosystem in this fashion are: The goal of this whitepaper is to make the case for • Production this enterprise-class cloud solution by examining • Test and development a high-profile use case example describing how Ticketmaster successfully migrated to the • Quality assurance cloud through use of the Teradata IntelliCloud™ Hybrid cloud use cases for enterprises employing technology suite. both cloud and on-premises systems include: • Cloud bursting 1 “Build and Market Cloud-Based Offerings Primer for • Cloud data labs 2017” published Jan 24, 2017 by analysts Ed Anderson, Gregor Petri • Cloud disaster recovery

Contents Accelerating Demand for Cloud Services...... 2 Access to the Instance...... 7 Ticketmaster Background and Backups...... 7 Cloud Migration Motivations...... 3 What Is Teradata IntelliCloud?...... 8 Ticketmaster Cloud Migration Experiences...... 4 IntelliCloud Security...... 8 The Ticketmaster Journey with Teradata Hybrid Cloud Analytics...... 10 into the Cloud...... 5 Transparency...... 10 Cloud Migration...... 5 Location Enforcement...... 10 What Ticketmaster Learned...... 7 Orchestrated Entitlement...... 10 Networking...... 7 Bi-Directional Migration...... 10 Project Management...... 7 Single Management Console...... 10 Data Movement...... 7 Summary...... 10 NPARC...... 7 Resources...... 10

Ticketmaster Background and Cloud Migration Motivations Founded in an Arizona State University college placed on it,” said Shawn Moon, Director dorm room more than 40 years ago, Ticketmaster of Database Solutions, when describing the has grown into a global ticket retailer serving Ticketmaster journey with Teradata in the cloud. 19 countries. Ticketmaster sells hundreds of The chart below depicts the Ticketmaster data millions of tickets to every type of show and venue environment that existed during the cloud yearly. The company’s online properties get over evaluation period. It’s apparent that the company a billion unique visitors per year. The Ticketmaster had data everywhere, from many different e-commerce site is one of the top three in the sources, on different platforms and with different world, while using analytics and data to always schemas. There were silos of data with nothing improve the fan experience and fill venues for truly shared, and trying to create a cohesive its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment. report with data sources from different systems “We needed a platform that was fast, predictable, was very difficult. Teradata was chosen to build scalable, something we could grow with and a large, robust data warehouse to service all the something that would grow with us as we company’s needs. continue to have additional data and demands

The Ticketmaster data chart was evidence that a solution was needed

Ticketmaster Cloud Migration Experiences To meet the corporate objective of eliminating on-premises data centers by 2017, Ticketmaster With a cloud solution, Ticketmaster has put everything in the cloud including can accommodate changes in demand production, development, and disaster recovery by spinning up resources and then with Teradata IntelliCloud while realizing cost shutting them down as needed. reduction. The migration was completed on schedule and within budget. The process took just 10 weeks to complete the migration. Users include finance, accounting, and marketing as well as Ticketmaster clients such as venues and “Many of our users haven’t the foggiest promoters all have access to the analytics and idea that we’re no longer running on data in the cloud. Users notice faster reporting the same on-premises system,” said and more data streams like social media that yield Moon. “We minimized our downtime, increased insights for decision making. Marketing can develop fan profiles for future event we moved it over quickly, and we had promotions with personalization. a great partnership [with Teradata] to pull that off. We didn’t have to touch “Our marketing team is able to get robust data about our fans and bring that all together so they any of our applications, ETL processes, can create profiles that allow them to let the fans or BI solutions.” know things that they don’t already know—like new acts that are coming to town, or when their “Much of our company didn’t even know it favorite bands are coming. This is where the big happened,” said Moon. “Many of our users chunk of analytics is focused,” said Moon. haven’t the foggiest idea that we’re no longer With the new cloud platform, Ticketmaster and running on the same on-premises system. We Live Nation can quickly pivot when sales are minimized our downtime, we moved it over sagging, for example by sending segmented and quickly, and we had a great partnership [with personalized offers to create demand. Teradata] to pull that off. We didn’t have to touch any of our applications, ETL processes, Let’s look at how Ticketmaster found success after or BI solutions. All we did was change DNS overcoming several challenges to complete the entries and those applications were none the cloud migration, including an aggressive project wiser. It was a really smooth transition.” timeline and low tolerance for system downtime. Flexibility has been a game changer. The Ticketmaster sales cycle is very spikey since demand for resources is high during the first hours of ticket availability for a popular event, after which demand is reduced significantly. With a cloud solution, the company can accommodate changes in demand by spinning up resources and then shutting them down as needed.

The Ticketmaster Journey with Teradata into the Cloud In 2011 Ticketmaster invested in a 9-node Teradata aware of events, and make sure customer service on-premises production system and a 4-node had relevant data available. The new systems also system for development and quality assurance. were used for bot detection since bots can scoop From those systems they took web behavior data, up tickets to post on the resale market for much transactions, demographics, etc., and combined higher prices. them, which was something the company had not Later, in 2015, the company was operating been able to tie together before. Subsequently, with basically the same architecture except for they could build out customer profiles, perform an additional 2-node disaster recovery system, robust reporting to drive the business, carry out along with an upgraded system for dev/QA. customer segmentation to make sure fans were

Adding Teradata to the Landscape

Cloud Migration Continued success and rapid growth led to the company hitting a wall with their Teradata Continued success and rapid growth led system capacity. As a result, the staff considered to the company hitting a wall with their all options for mitigating the situation. After Teradata system capacity. Ticketmaster much deliberation, Ticketmaster decided to go decided to go with Teradata IntelliCloud. with Teradata IntelliCloud. Key factors for the decision were: • Low risk due to the same basic architecture Executing the cloud migration meant increased as their on-premises Teradata systems capacity, automatic access to the latest software • Cost containment since there would be version and features (a default benefit of cloud no more costly capital expenditure projects computing), getting the system off-premises in in the future consideration of the company mandate to close data centers, containing cost and making it more • Managed system that provides Ticketmaster predictable—and the requirement to do it fast! DBAs and architects more time to focus on The deal was signed on December 18, 2015 with value-add the need to get to production by March 31, 2016. • Teradata was a trusted partner 5 Copyright © 2018, insideBIGDATA, LLC www.insidebigdata.com | 508-259-8570 | [email protected] Ticketmaster: Using the Cloud

The diagram below maps the old on-premises system to the new IntelliCloud system.

Mapping to the new Ticketmaster Teradata IntelliCloud solution

The actual migration took 3-4 weeks of intense • Weekly propensity scoring (a particularly planning followed by the build-out of the new long job that previously was run weekly platform. Several options were discussed to because it took so long) – cut from minimize impact since users on the production 7.5 hours to 2.5 hours (now run daily for system could not take an extended downtime. the analytics group) After Ticketmaster executed on the move, • Reporting SLA – meeting 100% of SLAs for the following results were realized: key daily reports vs. 90% for on-premises • ETL runtime – improved for 90% of jobs • No longer I/O bound! • ETL runtime – reduced by more than half for 62% of jobs

What Ticketmaster Learned During the cloud migration process, the Ticketmaster staff learned several important One of the benefits of IntelliCloud is lessons from which other organizations that Teradata takes care of backups. can benefit: You need to be aware that a managed service for backup may be somewhat } Networking different than what you’re accustomed Don’t minimize the amount of effort required to, e.g., no incremental backups. to deal with networking considerations with a cloud system, including VPN connections. } NPARC } Project Management This is a streaming backup and recovery There was a real need to coordinate a fair solution which is traditionally done by number of disparate teams within Teradata plugging in cables between cabinets in same and Ticketmaster—and the Teradata Project data center. As such, it’s easy to take a multi- Management (TDPM) team addressed this terabyte or even petabyte system and blast requirement. It’s important to have a close it over to the new platform—but moving working relationship between the company data to the cloud is different and takes longer. project manager and Teradata project manager. There is a lot of coordination } Access to the Instance on the Teradata side that is difficult to Once you’re running in the cloud, you’ll need achieve without engaging Teradata project to adjust the way you do things compared management resources. to what you’ve always done. For example, } Data Movement there’s no access to the operating system of the Teradata cloud instance, so OS activities The company needed to consider how best must be performed by the Teradata Cloud to move 35TB of data thousands of miles Operations Team. across the country with minimal downtime. There were a few things that Ticketmaster } Backups did to ensure successful data movement: One of the benefits of IntelliCloud is that • Do some housecleaning and identify critical Teradata takes care of backups. You need to data and make it as small as possible; old be aware that a managed service for backup dev copies must go! may be somewhat different than what you’re • You don’t have to ship the whole database accustomed to, e.g., no incremental backups. at once. Identify what can go early or late. For example, early on you can transfer any large insert-only tables containing historical data. • Utilize all the tools at your disposal, e.g., Teradata Data Mover, BAR, ETL processes (such as Informatica and Talend), shipped drives, etc.

What Is Teradata IntelliCloud? Teradata IntelliCloud is a fully-managed as-a-service IntelliCloud subscriptions consist of software, offering in which Teradata sets up and manages services, infrastructure, and support. Extending performance, security, availability, and operations the residential analogy, customers can enjoy an so that customers can focus on data-driven IntelliCloud home in whichever neighborhood business outcomes. where they want to live—whether that’s in Teradata data centers, in Amazon Web Services, or IntelliCloud offerings enable customers in Microsoft Azure. This flexibility and portability to focus on business value, service enables customers to adopt IntelliCloud for whatever data and IT infrastructure strategy works utilization, and analytic insight and not for them, both today and in the future. worry about setting up or running the underlying software or infrastructure. IntelliCloud service features are comprehensive. Performance is enabled by multiple instance types and multiple regions for low-latency access. The business benefits of having each of these four Security is provided via 24x7x365 monitoring, areas included in the IntelliCloud subscription encryption of data in motion and at rest, and include getting the most value from analytic audited compliance for ISO 27001, SOC 1 and 2, investment; having peace of mind about security; PCI, and HIPAA standards. Availability is enjoying higher uptime and greater business guaranteed with a Service Level Agreement for continuity; and focusing in-house resources on up to 99.9% uptime as well as daily backups for business outcomes rather than infrastructure rollback and business continuity. Environmental management. Operations are taken care of including software patches, version upgrades, and a self-service IntelliCloud service can be thought of as a pre-built web-based management console for easy home that has been designed and constructed account administration. with customer requirements in mind. It’s ready for move-in, and maintenance and security are included in the subscription. Customers simply bring their data—their furniture, as it were— and Teradata stays outside the house so that customers have complete privacy.

IntelliCloud Security Cloud computing has revolutionized the way network security, data protection, monitoring, and organizations manage their business and data, access controls. Teradata designed its IntelliCloud but it has also brought a unique set of security services from the ground up to meet the most concerns. While some businesses are quick to advanced data security requirements, giving current embrace the agility and convenience of the cloud, and prospective customers the peace of mind that others remain hesitant because of fear about data their data is private and secure with Teradata. breaches and cybercrime. The company has invested in rigorous third party audits of its managed cloud offerings in order to Security is the number one priority for Teradata demonstrate compliance with security regulations IntelliCloud services; support is delivered for every and industry best practices such as ISO 27001, facet of cloud security including physical security, SOC 1, SOC 2, PCI, and HIPAA.

Teradata Market Leadership

Teradata is positioned as a leader in the Gartner change. This new software licensing model 2017 Magic Quadrant for Data Management is the first in the hybrid cloud market to feature Solutions for Analytics 2 issued February 20, 2017. portability—a shift away from cloud lock-in Gartner’s report opens by characterizing the or siloed on-premises deployments. market entering 2017: “Disruption is accelerating Combined with Teradata Aster Analytics and in this market, with more demand for broad Hadoop support, as well as a wide range of solutions that address multiple data types and business and industry-specific consulting offer distributed processing and repository. Cloud services, Teradata is well-positioned to help solutions are also gaining traction.” The report enterprises become market leaders. To ensure also addresses rising expectations, commenting economic efficiencies, Teradata’s consulting on the Leaders quadrant: “This Magic Quadrant team can provide potential and estimated return has a lot of white space in the upper-right corner, on investment and strategic business impact indicating that the market continues to demand projections for any analytic solution prior to more innovation and better execution to address the engagement. the needs of combined cloud and on-premises deployment, as well as cloud and big data combinations.” As Teradata introduces more licensing flexibility, the value proposition of Teradata Everywhere™ is the market’s most attractive in that it provides customer choice, flexibility, and performance at scale. The company offers innovative database license flexibility across hybrid cloud deployments, enabled through a consistent and simplified licensing model that delivers: (i) portability for deployment flexibility; (ii) subscription- based licenses; and (iii) simplified software tiers with bundled features. With portable database licenses, enterprises can now have the flexibility to choose, shift, expand, and restructure their hybrid cloud environment by moving licenses between deployment options as their business needs

2 Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, Analysts Roxane Edjlali, Adam M. Ronthal, Rick Greenwald, Mark A. Beyer, Donald Feinberg, February 20, 2017 9 Copyright © 2018, insideBIGDATA, LLC www.insidebigdata.com | 508-259-8570 | [email protected] Ticketmaster: Using the Cloud

Hybrid Cloud Analytics It’s clear with the growth of hybrid cloud } Orchestrated Entitlement infrastructure that this is the future of data An organization needs to be able to easily analytics. But many data analytics vendors are manage entitlements and licensing for their ambiguous at best on the role that hybrid cloud user base across the hybrid cloud solution. plays in their offering. The fact is that the cloud is simply a delivery mechanism for an analytics } Bi-Directional Migration solution, and it doesn’t speak to the quality of The solution must allow for bi-directional the solution itself. What is categorically true is migration to/from one infrastructure that enterprises today are combining on-premises, environment to another in the hybrid private, public, and managed clouds in their cloud deployment. infrastructure. To properly serve these adopters, analytics solutions need to emphasize five } Single Management Console key ideas: A hybrid cloud analytical solution should be } Transparency managed as one seamless environment across infrastructure boundaries—and so it should A hybrid cloud analytics solution is completely be managed via a single console. transparent to the end users of where the data resides and where the analysis happens. The fundamental thing to remember across all these ideas is that the solution must allow the } Location Enforcement adopter to choose where or which cloud they A properly governed solution enables use to pair with their on-premises solution; organizations to define rules around where that’s how the hybrid cloud environment can data and/or the analysis on that data can help the company realize true business value. be stored or run.

Summary One of the most widely discussed topics in IT today is moving workloads to cloud. The process of deciding whether or when to migrate to the cloud can be daunting. Further, finding the right technology fit for your enterprise objectives can be challenging with a cloud solution ecosystem filled with alternatives. To make the cloud adoption process more straightforward, this white paper provided a number of areas for consideration when evaluating a cloud platform. We also focused on the experiences of a high-profile enterprise—Ticketmaster—during the company’s migration to the cloud. Finally, we offered a top-tier cloud solution—Teradata IntelliCloud—as an excellent choice for transitioning from an on-premises system to one in the cloud.

Resources For additional information about Ticketmaster’s migration to the cloud, see: http://www.teradata.com/Resources/Web-Casts/Front-Row-Seat-to-the-Future-Ticketmasters- Migration-to-Teradata-Cloud/ http://www.teradata.com/Resources/Videos/Ticketmaster-Capitalizing-on-OPEX-Performance- Analytics-and-Data/ 10 Copyright © 2018, insideBIGDATA, LLC www.insidebigdata.com | 508-259-8570 | [email protected]