Brace tasked with leading and growing the company’s AWS practice
Continent 8 Technologies, a leading provider of cutting-edge managed IT solutions designed for the global iGaming and online sports betting industry, announces the promotion of David Brace to its executive leadership team.
In his new role, Brace will serve as practice lead for AWS solutions, spearheading the company’s continued expansion and innovation within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem.
The news follows Continent 8’s selection as an official AWS Solution Provider under the Solution Provider Program (SPP). This has enabled Continent 8 to augment its AWS portfolio, including Managed AWS Workloads, Managed Hybrid Network and AWS Cloud Migration.
Michael Tobin, CEO and Founder at Continent 8 Technologies, said: “Over the past eight years at Continent 8, David has consistently demonstrated a deep and nuanced understanding of technology, infrastructure, and the regulatory landscape – both on industry panels and directly with our customers. His expertise is widely respected, and this promotion is a well-earned recognition of his contributions.
“David’s elevation to the executive team comes at a pivotal moment for our business, as we sharpen our strategic focus on cloud innovation. He is the ideal leader to drive our AWS practice forward, bringing vision, experience, and a customer-first mindset. With continued investment in this area, we’re committed to delivering AWS solutions that are secure, scalable, and tailored to the unique demands of the iGaming sector.”
David Brace, Chief Alliance & Partnership Officer, AWS, at Continent 8 Technologies, added: “I’m honoured to join the executive team and lead our AWS practice. The iGaming industry is evolving rapidly, and cloud adoption is central to that transformation. Our goal is to simplify the journey for our customers – whether they’re launching in new markets, navigating regulatory frameworks, or scaling their operations globally. With AWS and Continent 8’s combined capabilities, we’re uniquely positioned to deliver.”
Continent 8 has vast experience in delivering AWS solutions to the industry. The company has already delivered 90% of AWS Outposts in the industry to major brands in the regulated betting and gaming market, including FanDuel, Fanatics Betting & Gaming, and Hard Rock Digital.
Meet David Brace and members of Continent 8’s AWS practice at AWS re:Invent 2025, 1-5 December in Las Vegas. To arrange a meeting, please visit https://lp.continent8.com/aws-reinvent-2025 or contact sales@continent8.com.
As an AWS Solution Provider, Continent 8 also offers managed services, including Managed AWS Outposts and Managed Hybrid Networking, available via the AWS Marketplace
Continent 8 Technologies, the leading provider of global cloud hosting, connectivity and cybersecurity solutions for the iGaming and online sports betting industry, announces enhanced AWS support to facilitate the deployment and management of the latest generation AWS Outposts racks, enabling secure, ultra-low-latency hybrid cloud infrastructures.
The second-generation AWS Outposts, announced at the end of April 2025, offer significant performance enhancements over their predecessors, including faster processing, higher memory capacity and increased network bandwidth for on-premises workloads. Continent 8 enables customers to capitalise on these advancements through the following offerings:
Continent 8 has extensive experience with AWS Outposts, having provided comprehensive support to operators and suppliers with the initial generation of rack platforms. Today, Continent 8 is responsible for over 90% of AWS Outposts deployments within the regulated betting and gaming industry.
Justin Cosnett, Chief Product Officer at Continent 8, stated, “Our strategic partnership with AWS, along with our deep experience with the first-generation AWS Outposts technology, enables us to provide the requisite expertise for delivering seamless AWS experiences. With the launch of the latest generation of AWS Outposts, we are well-positioned to manage the betting and gaming industry’s ‘business as usual’, day-to-day operations and IT infrastructure needs, allowing customers to swiftly benefit from the platform’s latency and performance enhancements for their most demanding gaming projects.”
Continent 8 is a Gold sponsor of the AWS Community Day Malta on 30 May and will be running a session on ‘Future-ready cloud solutions: winning in regulated markets’. Contact sales@continent8.com to arrange a meeting at the event.
Matteo Gabrielli, Senior Technical Solutions Architect, Continent 8 Technologies
AWS re:Invent 2024 showcased a clear direction: hybrid cloud is not just a trend, it’s the reality for many enterprises. Here’s what we learned…
AWS re:Invent 2024 demonstrated a significant evolution in hybrid cloud capabilities. I was particularly impressed by AWS’ commitment to simplifying complex operational challenges while maintaining flexibility in deployment options. The technical sessions focusing on hybrid architectures were especially relevant to Continent 8’s mission of enabling customer success through optimised infrastructure solutions. A key theme emerged around designing evolvable systems that can adapt to changing requirements while minimising operational overhead – a philosophy that aligns perfectly with how we approach solution architecture for our customers.
Several key product announcements underscored AWS’ commitment to hybrid cloud. EKS Hybrid Nodes (EKS-H) represent a significant step forward. As an early access partner, Continent 8 sees immense potential in this solution, which enables consistent Kubernetes operations across cloud and on-premises environments while leveraging AWS’ managed control plane. This simplifies management and ensures consistency.
The announcement also included important networking enhancements for hybrid connectivity, including improvements to AWS Cloud WAN and VPC capabilities. We also saw significant progress in AWS’ effort to unify and simplify their data, analytics and machine learning platforms, building upon S3 as the foundation. This reflects a broader trend toward simplified, integrated operational experiences – a principle we consistently apply in our hybrid architecture designs.
Two overarching themes dominated this year’s re:Invent, highlighting the evolving needs of modern businesses.
Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, introduced the concept of ‘simplexity’, which resonated deeply. It emphasises the need to manage inherent system complexity while maintaining operational simplicity. This balance is crucial for organisations seeking both innovation and efficiency.
The need for evolvability was also a key theme. Building systems that can adapt and scale over time is paramount. This means embracing flexibility, modularity and decentralised architectures to accommodate future changes and growth. Organisations face several key challenges when considering hybrid deployments. These include meeting specific regulatory requirements and ensuring data resides in the appropriate location; balancing investments across on-premises and cloud environments to maximise efficiency and cost-effectiveness; and maintaining consistent operations, security and management across different infrastructures.
At Continent 8, we recognise that while AWS Outposts is excellent for extending the AWS ecosystem and operational consistency to new markets, it isn’t always the best fit. Outposts provides a fully managed AWS experience on-premises, but it can be costly, especially for non ‘top-tier’ customers or those with limited edge resource needs. The expense becomes particularly significant when designing for disaster recovery, which often requires multiple Outposts per jurisdiction.
That’s why we’re helping customers explore cost-effective alternatives to Outposts. By leveraging tools like EKS-H, S3-compatible storage on-premises and other components for networking and compute, we can build tailored solutions that deliver similar functionality and operational consistency without the full Outposts overhead. This approach is particularly beneficial for customers who find Outposts over-sized or cost prohibitive for their needs. At Continent 8, our priority is to find the optimal solution for each customer, enabling and accelerating their success by providing expert guidance and support in navigating the complexities of hybrid cloud.
Ready to modernise your sports betting and gaming infrastructure while maintaining regulatory compliance? As a member of the AWS Solutions Provider Program (SPP), we can help you architect, deploy and optimise your hybrid Kubernetes environment. Contact your Regional Sales Director or our team at sales@continent8.com to begin your journey with us.
Learn more about our AWS solutions here.
Matteo Gabrielli, Senior Technical Solutions Architect, Continent 8 Technologies
At AWS re:Invent 2024, Amazon Web Services announced Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes (EKS-H), and Continent 8 Technologies is proud to be a strategic launch partner for this new feature. As a trusted infrastructure provider in the betting and gaming industry, we enable customers to extend their EKS clusters to Continent 8’s on-premises infrastructure. This solution addresses a critical need in the betting and gaming industry: extending Kubernetes clusters to meet regulatory requirements with minimal operational overhead. By running EKS-H on Continent 8’s infrastructure, customers can efficiently deploy workloads in regulated jurisdictions while maintaining the simplicity of AWS-managed services as EKS.
EKS-H allows customers to use on-premises servers as worker nodes in their EKS clusters located in-region. While AWS continues to manage the control plane, workloads can run on Continent 8’s infrastructure in specific jurisdictions where data sovereignty and gaming regulations require local presence.
Gaming operators and suppliers face unique challenges:
EKS-H on Continent 8’s infrastructure solves these challenges by providing:
Our infrastructure is uniquely positioned to support EKS-H:
Continent 8 provides a seamless path to implementing EKS-H. Our team can help:
Ready to modernise your betting and gaming infrastructure while maintaining regulatory compliance? As an AWS Advanced Partner and member of the AWS Solutions Provider Program (SPP), we can help you architect, deploy and optimise your hybrid Kubernetes environment. Contact our sales team at sales@continent8.com to begin your journey with us.
The impact of Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes is already resonating within the industry, particularly among our current customers. Games Global, a long-standing Continent 8 partner, has been at the forefront of infrastructure innovation within the gaming sector. Matthew Harris, their Principal Architect, explains how this solution addresses key industry challenges:
“Online gambling companies not only have to protect customer data and ensure security like everyone else, but they also face tough regulations from gaming authorities worldwide. These rules often dictate where we can host our gaming systems, which can limit or even rule out using public cloud services in some markets. EKS Hybrid Nodes let us meet these requirements by hosting workloads where needed while still taking advantage of AWS EKS’s easy management. Partnering with experts like Continent 8, who really know our industry inside and out, makes this option even more appealing.”
– Matthew Harris, Principal Architect at Games Global