What Big Brother can teach us about observability and the gambling industry
While it may seem that there is little in common with the gambling industry and the popular TV show Big Brother, it seems the opposite is true. The success of Big Brother, now in its 25th season, is mostly due to the devoted legions of viewers who hang on every word and movement of its contestants who are under 24-hour surveillance.
As much as the constant surveillance aspect of Big Brother lends itself well to the popularity of the show, the gaming and gambling industry also stand to benefit from something similar: the real-time insights gained directly from IT infrastructure monitoring and observability.
Challenges of the ‘always on’ digital landscape
Businesses and industries that operate 24/7 and rely heavily on IT systems must operate at near 100% uptime to drive successful business outcomes. This is simply a fact of life in dynamic and competitive industries such as gambling and gaming.
With nearly 5,000 global casinosand online gambling businesses as of 2023, it’s safe to say that competition for customer revenue is stiff. In order to succeed in the industry, it’s crucial for firms to adopt an “always on” mentality whereby downtime — any period when services are unavailable to customers— is almost always unacceptable.
For gaming and gambling firms, or any other firms relying primarily on online revenue, significant periods of downtime could result in business disruptions or worse as disgruntled customers flee to competitors.
Gaming, gambling and observability
When it comes to monitoring and observability for the gaming industry, there are differences between the two that are important to distinguish one from the other. Monitoring your gaming and gambling systems will always tell you what is or isn’t working at a given moment in time, allowing for IT engineers to identify and mitigate system problems as quickly as possible.
Observability, on the other hand, is more about readiness for over-the-horizon unknowns. While monitoring tells you what systems are working properly, observability makes sense of real-time data in context, allowing firms to drastically reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) and make the right decisions that promote a strategic business advantage over competitors.
The observability payoff for gambling and gaming
The global online casino market size alone is worth nearly $66 billion this year. By leveraging advanced monitoring and intelligent observability solutions, the gaming and gambling market size is poised for growth even in an environment of evolving consumer preferences and a changing regulatory landscape.
With intelligent observability in their toolkits, gambling firms gain the upper hand to proactively deal with ‘unknown unknowns’, optimize performance, be in better position to meet regulatory requirements, and leverage the voyeuristic nature of Big Brother to profitable advantage.
For further insight into the Big Brother effect and the benefits of monitoring and observability to the gambling industry, read the original article by clicking below.