Case Study

GREYHOUND RACING IRELAND

Managed IT Services for the Greyhound Racing Ireland

A partnership between Greyhound Racing Ireland (GRI) formerly the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB) and INNOVATE is proving a sure bet, according to the GRI’s senior engineer Paddy O’Grady.

BACKGROUND

INNOVATE came on board at the GRI to provide the infrastructure that will enable GRI to expand the use of video services, seamlessly cope with peaks in betting demand and also improve their on-premise customer experience, in a five-year partnership.

SOLUTION

The service involves the migration of the IGB’s infrastructure from Amazon Web Services to Microsoft Azure, and optimises the company’s investment to allow for future growth and innovation.

“The switch-over in services was problem-free and gained positive feedback from all staff members”, said Paddy.

“I’ve been involved in at least three system changes in my time here and this was, by far, the smoothest migration,” he said.

“The delivery and performance of the cloud has been met with positive feedback from staff and it has changed our way of doing business, in working more clever rather than harder. Our product is racing but we need a better distribution of pictures throughout the world and Innovate really understood that and advised on how best to achieve that. They are hugely personal and there’s never any problem in getting to talk to the right people.  We have found in the past, that high staff turnovers meant you had to explain the same things again and again to different people.

Innovate retain their staff and that means you know who you are dealing with. They are contactable at any time – exactly what we need if a problem arises when races are running every 15 minutes. They really have a good understanding of our business and are not only proactive but have a vision for ourselves in the future. In our industry, some products have a short lifespan and need to be pushed out quickly. Instead of talking, INNOVATE implement them as quickly and safely as possible.Innovate know that staying still is going backwards and businesses need to be evolving all the time. They really are an up-and-coming young company, and they care.”

The GRI is a commercial semi-state body which is responsible for the control and development of the greyhound industry in the Republic of Ireland.

Established in 1958, it has licensed 17 tracks, owning nine of them.

RESULT

“We selected INNOVATE as our cloud service provider because they demonstrated a real knowledge of how to map our IT transformation to the goals of our business. Their solution delivers not just a modernised environment for today’s needs, it is future-proofed for our growth plans around video access, and will ultimately bring us closer to the customer,”
Joe Lewins, Director of Tote and Wagering, Greyhound Racing Ireland.

INNOVATE, founded in 2005, has grown to become the leading cloud service provider in Ireland.

INNOVATE design, deliver and manage secure cloud-based IT and communications environments which enable their clients to manage their organisations, regardless of size, from the desk-to-the data centre and everything in between.

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