Continent 8’s co-founder and CEO, Michael Tobin, was recently interviewed by Games Magazine Brasil about the company’s involvement in Brazil’s nascent gaming market. With four new locations opening up by 2020, the Continent 8 network will expand across South America and provide end users with the best-in-class connectivity experience.
For a preview of the interview with Games Magazine Brasil, read excerpts below.
We see the Brazilian market as one of the most exciting markets in the world, especially in Latin America. With over 200 million people that love sports, we expect the market to be VERY large. Right now as the USA is growing and expanding in Sports Betting online, we would expect Brazil to experience similar, if not greater growth.
Exactly, that was our goal: to offer the ministry cost-free consultancy and assistance to their technical team. We have worked with regulators all over the world to assist them with internet infrastructure questions, cyber security, cloud, network, hosting etc. We are in over 50 locations around the world, and we work with dozens of regulators with many technical needs – no two regulators do things exactly the same. Everyone requires different things, and we want to help Brazil understand the lessons we’ve learned. At the end of the day, we want the end user to have the very best experience they can have, which would be through a safe and fast internet network, and operators and regulators would provide this to the end user.
We can offer assistance to the technical teams, as well as our previous experience in working in many other regulations. We have been through this “regulation” process a few times in our company’s long history. The fact that we remain neutral when it comes to operators and game providers, makes us different as a source of consultancy.
Read the full article at Games Magazine Brasil in English.
Leia o artigo completo em português.
Continent 8 will sponsor KPMG’s Isle of Man eGaming Summit 2019, taking place at COMIS Mount Murray on 3 October. We are proud to have been a sponsor of the KPMG Summit since its inception on the Isle of Man! The event will address challenges, changes, and collaboration in the industry, raising standards together.
Continent 8’s David Black,Managing Director-EMEA, will be speaking at the summit, giving a recap of Isle of Man gaming over the past decade.
Continent 8 is the island’s only service provider offering direct, private connectivity to a global network of over 50 locations and Cloud providers – across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We remain uniquely positioned to serve the gaming industry with a range of innovative data security, connectivity, hosting, and compliance solutions in the Isle of Man and around the world.
Plan to attend:
Isle of Man eGaming Summit
3 October 2019
COMIS Hotel – Mount Murray, Isle of Man
Connect with us:
Email: sales@continent8.com
+44 1624 694625
Continent 8’s Head of Solution Architecture Justin Cosnett was featured in SBC News with an editorial focusing on sports betting operators and the cloud. Discussing costs, infrastructure, hybrid models, dedicated options and more, he gives a thorough analysis of utilising cloud solutions.
Cloud technology comes in many forms. The most well-known are the ultra-scale cloud providers like Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft’s Azure.
The benefits of cloud from these providers are clear. Unlimited compute and storage capability charged on a usage (OPEX) basis. Arguably it’s “cheap” too – I’ll come back to that.
Online gambling companies, as with other online businesses, utilise cloud, and have done for a few years for various purposes; whether test and development or business analytics or content delivery.
Regulation has usually limited ambitions to opt for an “all cloud” model in the past, with the potential cost savings in maintaining, managing and hosting infrastructure encouraging many to consider moving as much to the cloud as they can.
As regulators look at cloud and its potential impact on the future, it’s a topic of discussion we have with our customers, competitors and even internally regularly. After all, Continent 8 has several cloud products, albeit more specifically designed towards the online gaming industry than the ultra-scale providers.
I’d best address the “cheap” statement – cloud provision can mean that an operator doesn’t have to purchase, maintain, manage and host infrastructure.
Usually, no capital expenditure (CAPEX, every 4-5 years) on equipment, reduced internal staffing (or outsourcing) to manage infrastructure, and no hosting and power fees.
In addition, and perhaps the most important part for a sports betting operator, that infrastructure, staffing and hosting needs to be scaled to cover the potential maximum usage.
Examples like a Football World Cup, NFL Super Bowl or UEFA Champions League where the infrastructure must be able to perform and scale to the consumer base. The rest of the time that equipment and staffing, whilst not “idle”, isn’t being used most efficiently.
This is where many chief technology and finance officers will begin a conversation when reviewing cloud migration – the efficiency of “pay for what you use, have limitless availability” is seemingly very appealing.
Note: Ultra-cloud providers are also now providing platform as a service (PaaS) and containerised development tools which can be consumed on demand with no underlying “server” infrastructure interaction at all. Some of this software is proprietary to the cloud provider, with obvious potential cost implications in the long term.
It’s for this reason that Continent 8 initially enabled customers’ journey to the cloud through private cloud connectivity (CloudConnect) several years ago. As discussed in a recent white paper, this connectivity offers financial benefits in reduced cost to Internet Bandwidth and therefore reduced DDoS mitigation costs, and technological benefits in reliable, low latency, private dedicated connectivity direct to the cloud providers network.
Our first customer on this journey was a sports betting operator, utilising (Microsoft Azure EU) cloud for “burst compute” – to provide a scalable infrastructure capability during international sporting events to add scale.
Movement “to Cloud” has been occurring (mainly) in Europe, where operators have either designed a “split” infrastructure capability to enable regulatory adherence and make use of cloud (a hybrid model), or where applicable used cloud in specific jurisdictions. Continent 8 similarly offers “incloud” capability in most European regulatory jurisdictions.
However, cloud should not ALWAYS be considered “inexpensive” – the scale of efficiency will vary dependent upon utilisation, and in fact most enterprise or “heavy” compute and storage consumers can actually spend more over a 3-4 year period than if they used dedicated, hosted equipment.
Cloud usually benefits the smaller operator or new market entrant, or as a burstable commodity available to large enterprises in a hybrid model. The Continent 8 Malta ‘start up Cloud’ being a good example. There are challenges for regulators, as well as compliance officers, in the use of cloud and where data is stored, the service level agreements and its impact on “substance”.
Some of these considerations were covered in previous white papers from Continent 8, and we expect to see further moves in regulation and supplier activity which could change the operating environment in Europe.
As ultra-scale cloud providers “capture” more data and compute through models which encourage data storage upload (for free in many cases), there can be more punitive data download or export models to be considered, and how those models will fare as the NEW cloud customer market starts to shrink.
There is, however, a new dynamic which Continent 8 has been facilitating; the move “from cloud”. Mostly beginning in the USA to fulfil the new regulatory environment – Continent 8 has seen an explosion in operators seeking a non-cloud OR dedicated (private) cloud option.
A combination of new market entrants or software designers bringing “developed in the cloud” solutions, and, previously non or less regulated “Fantasy Sports” providers “grown in the cloud” now need to create implementations in specific states or even facilities.
In many cases these companies do not necessarily have in-house skills or experience in procuring and managing and hosting production online gaming infrastructure, and so are looking to either bring in these skills or seek services from providers to produce a “cloud” experience on dedicated infrastructure.
Continent 8 meets this USA challenge with our private cloud solution, we take a customer’s cloud requirements (compute, memory and storage) and translate them into a fully managed dedicated infrastructure stack which is hosted and powered in a suitable environment.
This solution enables customers to concentrate on running the software and virtual instances, whilst Continent 8 managed the hardware infrastructure; including storage, maintenance, break-fix, networking and monitoring.
Combining this private cloud solution, with private connectivity to public clouds, customers are still able to reap the benefits such as data upload, whilst maintaining regulatory adherence to service this new market avoiding punitive data download.
In summary, any sports betting operator not already utilising cloud is likely a minority or soon will be. However, the move to cloud isn’t necessarily an end result, and care should be taken to ensure that access to assets and the ability to move them to another supplier or even to dedicated hosted equipment should be considered or even maintained as an option when reviewing spend and future development.
Read the editorial on SBC News.
Continent 8 is delighted to be attending ICE Africa on 2-3 October at the Sandton Convention Centre in South Africa. ICE is this year’s only B2B gaming event in Africa, offering a variety of valuable educational and networking opportunities at no cost to attendees! Continent 8 looks forward to being part of the conversation with the international B2B gaming industry’s biggest players and evaluating the challenges and promises of the region’s burgeoning gaming market.
As the largest Cloud infrastructure provider for iGaming across three continents, we connect, manage, and secure your most valuable information. Talk to us about:
If you plan on attending ICE in South Africa, set up a meeting with Continent 8 delegate Leon Allen today.
ICE Africa
2-3 October 2019
Sandton Convention Centre
South Africa
Email: sales@continent8.com
Phone: +44 1624 694625
Continent 8 will sponsor KPMG’s Isle of Man eGaming Summit 2019, taking place at COMIS Mount Murray on 3 October. We are proud to have been a sponsor of the KPMG Summit since its inception on the Isle of Man! The event will address the challenges and developments in the industry as well as exploring opportunities for collaboration and raising standards together.
Continent 8’s David Black, Managing Director EMEA, will be speaking at the summit, giving a recap of the developments in Isle of Man gaming over the past decade.
Continent 8 is the island’s only service provider offering direct, private connectivity to a global network of over 50 locations and Cloud providers – across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We remain uniquely positioned to serve the gaming industry with a range of innovative data security, connectivity, hosting, and compliance solutions in the Isle of Man and around the world.
Isle of Man eGaming Summit
3 October 2019
COMIS Hotel – Mount Murray, Isle of Man
Email: sales@continent8.com
+44 1624 694625
It’s no secret that Brazil presents a prodigious opportunity for the sports betting and poker industries, which have both been legalized this year. As regulations are written and formalized, Continent 8 needs to be present every step of the way. By working alongside regulators, Continent 8 can help technical teams establish rules that ensure a safe and secure IT infrastructure for operators, platform providers, payment processors, and ultimately, the end user.
Our core business has been to provide technologies and enable gaming operators and end users to interact safely over the internet. Continent 8 helps technical regulator teams understand the different levels of cyber security, Cloud, hosting solutions, and network operations. This is not our first time meeting with regulators – previously, we have provided free consultations to many other technical teams around the world including New Jersey, Gibraltar, Malta, and other regions.
With four new locations opening up before 2020, the Continent 8 network will expand across South America and provide end users with the best-in-class connectivity experience. This region presents a range of promising opportunities, and Continent 8 is proud to be on the cutting edge of these emerging developments.
Continent 8’s work in this region was recently highlighted in an article in Games Magazine Brasil, which you can preview below!
GAMES MAGAZINE BRASIL – Michael Tobin, CEO and Co-Founder of Continent 8 Technologies, a multi-jurisdictional provider of global networking solutions that connects, manages and secures information from public and private sector organizations in the igaming marketplace at over 40 locations in Europe, Asia and the Americas, meets today in the Ministry of Economy with SECAP representatives to discuss the technology issues related to fixed odds sports betting.
For 20 years, Continent 8 has been focused on the delivery of market-defining internet technologies, products and services. They provide businesses with secure, reliable facilities and networks to support critical online operations across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Continent 8 is expanding rapidly in many emerging markets across the world, remaining uniquely positioned to serve the iGaming industry with a range of innovative data security, connectivity, hosting, and compliance solutions.
Michael Tobin is co-founder of Continent 8 Technologies PLC and the creator of the “Continent 8” brand. He is an entrepreneur by nature and a former Director of Empire State Development, the lead economic development agency for New York State.
Read the full article at Games Magazine Brasil in English.
Leia o artigo completo em português.
Continent 8 is proud to sponsor the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) happening on October 14-17 at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas. G2E is the “largest gathering of global, commercial, and tribal gaming professionals in North America,” and gives attendees a firsthand look at the latest gaming technology, digital products, and casino amenities. Visit the Continent 8 team at booth #5020!
This event promises to be brimming with educational content on emerging technology and the latest developments in the industry! Continent 8 looks forward to being part of the dialogue and networking with some of the gaming industry’s movers and shakers. Attending G2E? Receive a free expo hall pass ($299 value) on us.
With the opening of our new Continent 8 Data Center at the Atlantic City Convention Center this past June and our ever-expanding multi-state capacity, Continent 8 is the largest Cloud infrastructure provider for online gaming, sports betting, and eSports in the United States and beyond. Currently, we have offerings in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia, with upcoming locations in Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Oregon. Over the past 18 months, the pace of expansion has been exceptional.
The data center at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides iGaming businesses with vital reliability, connectivity, security, and compliance as they expand across jurisdictions in the U.S. For more information on the Atlantic City Data Center and our multi-state expansion, visit atlanticcity-datacenter.com.
If you plan on attending G2E, please set up a meeting with the Continent 8 team!
Global Gaming Expo
Continent 8 booth #5020
October 14-17, 2019
Sands Expo, Las Vegas
Receive a Free Expo Hall Pass on us!
Email: sales@continent8.com
Phone: +1 514 461 5111
Continent 8 is proud to sponsor EGR US Power Summit 2019, happening September 12-13 in Newport Beach, California. EGR US Power Summit 2019 will feature talks from leading experts in the sports betting industry on new gaming opportunities for Tribes, discussing the recipe for long-term growth, mobile innovation and product growth, exploring data collaboration opportunities, and more!
Members of the Continent 8 executive team look forward to engaging in discussions with other industry leaders about the future of gaming and sports betting. The U.S. market is unlike any other when you consider the exciting partnerships emerging between casino brands, media groups, and sporting bodies. Sports betting is currently regulated in 11 states and six states have recently passed laws to enable online betting. Legislation is presently pending in even more states. The constant strain on all sectors of the industry to deliver is becoming increasingly apparent. With more and more states opening up, new timelines set by regulators, and partnerships forming, the market is constantly evolving and full of surprises.
Continent 8 has remained true to its commitment to being ahead of the game and invest in every state that regulates online gaming. Currently, we have offerings in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia, with upcoming locations in Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Oregon. Over the past 18 months, the pace of expansion has been exceptional. Learn more about our U.S. expansion and new Atlantic City Data Center.
If you plan on attending EGR US Power Summit 2019, schedule a time to talk to members of the Continent 8 executive team about sports betting and online gaming.
Plan to attend
EGR US Power Summit
September 12-13, 2019
Newport Beach, California
Connect with us
Email: sales@continent8.com
Phone: +1 514 461 5120
The Continent 8 Technologies team is headed to Malta for iGaming Next on 10 September! This jam-packed one-day event promises 800 delegates, high-profile investors, and global media coverage.
As the “gateway to Europe,” Malta is at the forefront of the online gaming industry and home to some of the world’s largest online gaming businesses. Continent 8 is the only global data centre provider to offer fully redundant dual data centres within Malta.
Opened in 2007, our first facility is two miles from the Malta International Airport and five miles from the main commercial district. In 2016, an additional facility was opened, located just four miles from the airport.
Both sites offer high-quality co-location capabilities, as well as Continent 8’s standard product service suite, enabling customers to provision in-jurisdiction disaster recovery or “active-active” operations.
Set up a meeting with Continent 8 delegates David Black, Managing Director EMEA, and Graham Foster, Account Director, to learn more about how Continent 8 can meet your gaming needs in Malta.
Plan to attend
iGaming Next
10 September, 2019
Intercontinental Arena, Malta
Contact us
Email: sales@continent8.com
Phone: +44 1624 694625
Continent 8 Technologies is a proud to be a gold corporate partner of a special concert in celebration of Gibraltar National Week. Held at the Europa Point Sports Complex on 9 September 2019, the event will feature legendary tenor Andrea Bocelli in concert with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. Continent 8 Account Director Jim McGovern and General Manager Luis Garcia will be in attendance.
Andrea Bocelli will perform selections from his chart-topping album, “Si,” along with renditions of arias, love songs and crossover hits. For over 20 years, he has been thrilling audiences with his performances, selling nearly 90 million records worldwide, and performing for four US Presidents, two popes, and royal families around the world.
We are excited to take part in celebrating the wonderful country of Gibraltar, especially on the 25th anniversary of the event this year!
With over 40 connected locations around the world, Continent 8 provides critical Cloud infrastructure solutions across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Continent 8’s Gibraltarian data centre is uniquely housed 500 metres deep within the Rock of Gibraltar itself. This Continent 8-owned and built, ex-United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD) facility is the most secure and well-equipped hosting centre in the jurisdiction. A comprehensive suite of services and solutions are available from our Gibraltar data centre, ranging from traditional co-location to fully managed Cloud infrastructure solutions.
Event Details
Andrea Bocelli with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra
9 September, 2019 – 8:00 p.m.
Europa Point Sports Complex – Gibraltar
Connect with us:
Email: sales@continent8.com
Phone: +44 1624 694625