Featured Client: Ladbrokes Coral Group

Latest News: 172nd Grand National experience

For the third time in a row, Symphony Solutions has delivered great performance to Ladbrokes Coral group.

Symphony Solutions in-house developed sports betting front-end platform called OXYGEN, has serviced successfully all Coral clients via Desktop, Tablet, Mobile, iOS & Android Native applications.

Once again, the platform has successfully managed to handle year-on-year all-time highest volumes of logins, concurrent users, new registration and transactions per minute.

Who are Ladbrokes Coral Group

Ladbrokes Coral are a British-based betting and gaming company acquired by GVC Holdings in March, 2018. GVC is one of the largest betting and gaming groups in the world and an FTSE 100 global organization. Business is expected to accelerate as smartphone users grow by another 500 million by 2020.

The Coral brand is a leader in In-play betting which is the fastest growing betting media in the UK. In-play mobile betting apps allow punters to place bets after an event has begun, while watching the event livestream. This heightens interest among users in this multi-featured application and allows increased frequency of bets during a single sports game.

More about Ladbrokes Coral…

The Growth of a Partnership

What began in 2014 with Proof of Concept, 4 Symphony Solutions engineers, and an Oxygen platform with a single-page application has grown to a responsive sports betting platform with 200 people, 13 Teams of 9 – 12 people each including shared services (QA and DevOps), and a partnership as solid as Gibraltar.

2014

4 Engineers

→

2019

200 people

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)

How do the teams work - are there front-end and back-end developers on each team, does each team work on separate features?

Teams are small feature teams, each fully equipped to work on any feature top to bottom (front-end to back end). A typical team is 1 Scrum Master, 1 Tech Lead, 3-4 Front End developers, 1 back end developer, 2-3 QA's.

What are the different parts to the overall project and the most significant challenges for each?

The product for this client is a sports betting platform, consisting of mobile/ desktop websites, iOS and Android applications, middle ware services and back office. 24/7 support is provided. Each of the parts must perform and scale during high peaks of load and when the system usage is moderate.

Please explain the technologies used and the biggest challenges from a tech stand point.

Delivering such a complex service to the end users assumes usage of a wide variety of technologies and tools, from Akamai to multiple services on AWS to CI/CD and testing automation tools.

How about micro-services? Please explain the micro-services and how they are used.

We have long been using micro-services on the project, but we do not use the 'micro-services' term, rather simply services. Each middle ware component is isolated into a small stateless service which is containerized and deployed to AWS using EC3, Docker, Application Load Balancer, etc. This approach allows us to scale the platform depending on load and keep the costs of the running of the platform low.

You mention Angular 6 migration in this article. What about Angular 7? What other versions of Java are used?

Migration to Angular 6 has just been completed. It is still too early to think about Angular 7. The team is focused on getting all of the benefits out of the Angular 6 framework in terms of performance and server-side rendering, and at the same time not jeopardizing end users' features developed specifically for them.

Do the open jobs for Coral involve 100% of time? How is the time divided in general?

Coral jobs are 100% dedicated to this client. Within the structure, average allocation of time is as follows:

60% Working on new features

20% Meetings

10% Writing documentation

5% Client support

5% Maintenance

Why Interesting

Developers and IT professionals who thrive on fast-paced work, the complexity of 13 teams interacting on multiple projects coming together in a 13-week period, use of the latest technologies and services, and the rapid development of new applications will want to look further.

Key Points of The Project

Agile Certifications provided by company

Leading SAFe, SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, SAFe for Teams, Agile Fundamentals

Latest technologies and services we Use

Angular 7, Angular 6, Java 8, Akamai, AWS, CI / CD (testing automation tools), EC3, Docker, Application Load Balancer

Job profile

Working on new features – 60%, Meetings – 20%, Writing documentation – 10%, Client support – 5%, Maintenance – 5%

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What Symphony Solutions Has Done for Coral

Symphony Solutions has been a steady collaborator and partner with Coral for nearly 5 years, during which time the partnership has grown, reaching over 150 engineers in 2018. Some of Symphony Solutions’ contributions follow:

Took ownership and control over mobile betting platform

Increased speed to market of new features development

Improved innovation across entire mobile betting platform

Successfully implemented SAFe (scaled agile framework)

Completed migration from Angular JS to Angular 6 in eight months' time

Optimized costs required to develop and maintain the sports betting platform