MapR Selected by Goodgame Studios

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 19 — MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the top-ranked distribution for Apache Hadoop that integrates web-scale enterprise storage and real-time database capabilities, today announced that Goodgame Studios, a leading free-to-play online game development company, is using MapR to improve the gaming experience for its 270 million registered users worldwide. MapR enables Goodgame Studios to deploy a single open platform that can quickly and easily integrate new technologies, respond to gamer behavior in real-time, reduce costs and increase performance.

The combined requirements of a highly competitive gaming market, rapid corporate growth, and ambitious development plans have compelled Goodgame Studios to consolidate several clusters into a single cost-effective and high-performance MapR cluster featuring Hadoop, Apache Spark and Apache Drill. Goodgame Studios leverages Apache Mesos instead of YARN as its general resource management system and relies on Spark as its computational and analytics engine. Additionally, the seamless integration of HP Vertica and Drill into the MapR platform as SQL query engines enables Goodgame Studios to immediately explore data managed in MapR-DB, the NoSQL database.

“From an IT perspective, we wanted the simplest way to maintain the different components such as file systems, databases, and compute engines,” said Andreas Scheel, senior data warehouse development, Goodgame Studios. “Moving from a multi-cluster Hadoop solution to a single MapR cluster with Hadoop and Spark have enabled us to build a consolidated, co-located data platform with scalable storage as well as the computational engines we wanted without any kind of bottlenecks. This makes for a significantly faster data-to-action cycle.”

With their stated goal of becoming a worldwide leader in gaming, Goodgame Studio’s philosophy of “data always beats opinion” is key to creating highly compelling gaming experiences for their players. By shifting to real-time analytics and recommendations powered by Apache Spark, Goodgame Studios can immediately see customer responses when the company makes changes to its massive multiplayer online (MMO) games.

Switching from a competing Hadoop distribution, Goodgame Studios’ consolidated MapR cluster requires about one third of the hardware than they previously needed, reducing costs and maintenance requirements. The multi-tenant capabilities in MapR combined with its encryption and granular access control features also make it easier for Goodgame Studios to ensure against unauthorized data access.

Furthermore, Goodgame Studios points to the value of the MapR solution in terms of its commitment to open APIs and standards like NFS and POSIX.

“We needed an open platform so we can implement any kind of software and introduce new technology components whenever we wanted to. We could not do this with other Hadoop distributions,” explained Scheel. “With MapR, there are no limits on opportunities. If something comes out that’s new, we can use it immediately, we don’t have to wait.”

Goodgame Studios also plans to implement the recently announced in-Hadoop document database capabilities that will soon be available in MapR-DB. This will speed the application development cycle with the easy-to-use JSON paradigm.

“Goodgame Studios is yet another strong example of the value that the MapR platform can bring to an innovative and ambitious organization,” said Jack Norris, chief marketing officer at MapR Technologies. “Their ability to rapidly develop and securely deploy so many key applications on a single cluster is an excellent demonstration of the power of MapR.”

About Goodgame Studios

Goodgame Studios is Germany’s leading developer and publisher of gaming software and specializes in the free-to-play market, with a focus on mobile and browser games. The company offers 12 games in 26 languages and has over 270 million registered users worldwide. With more than 1200 employees, the company has the largest workforce compared to other German computer game developers. Goodgame Studios was founded in Hamburg in 2009 and is owner-operated. Along with the headquarters, there are also subsidiaries in Tokyo and Seoul. Goodgame Studios only markets and publishes games which it develops in-house. You can find them on its portal, as well as through an extensive global partner network.

The development of the company has been recognized by multiple awards, among them “Entrepreneur of the Year 2011” from Ernst & Young, the “Technology Fast 50 Award 2014” from Deloitte for being the fastest growing German technology company in 2014, and “Best European Studio” at the European Games Awards 2014. The company’s games have also received several industry awards; most recently, Goodgame Empire was awarded “Best European Browser Game” and Empire: Four Kingdoms “Best European Mobile Game” at the European Game Awards 2014.

About MapR Technologies

MapR provides the industry’s only big data platform that combines the processing power of the top-ranked Hadoop with web-scale enterprise storage and real-time database capabilities, enabling customers to harness the enormous power of their data. Organizations with the most demanding production needs, including sub-second response for fraud prevention, secure and highly available data-driven insights for better healthcare, petabyte analysis for threat detection, and integrated operational and analytic processing for improved customer experiences, run on MapR. A majority of customers achieve payback in fewer than 12 months and realize greater than 5X ROI. MapR ensures customer success through world-class professional services and with free on-demand training that 45,000 developers, data analysts and administrators have used to close the big data skills gap. Amazon, Cisco, Google, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Teradata are part of the worldwide MapR partner ecosystem. Investors include Google Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, NEA, Qualcomm Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. Connect with MapR on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

—

Source: MapR