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amaysim, a leading Australian online-led Mobile Services Provider (MSP), faced challenges in analyzing and obtaining insights from the vast amount of data it collected. The company had over 10 billion call data records, with this number growing by more than 20 million call data records daily. The data was complex and came from multiple sources including Livechat, Zendesk, call data records, Google Analytics and more. The previous BI methodology required coding which could not easily scale to business users. Insights could only be sought by one or two individuals within the organization, limiting business gains due to resource constraints and the time-intensive process. The low productivity levels of the current solution prevented the team from fully realizing the value of their data.

Spil Games, a company that publishes and distributes mobile games to over 100 million monthly users, was struggling to extract insights from its massive volumes of data. The company wanted to build dashboards based on multiple data sources quickly and easily to drive data-driven decisions on a daily basis. The data they wanted to learn more about included everything from game loading times and search engine advertising optimization, to user demographics. At the time, Spil Games already had a BI tool in place for dashboards, but it was inefficient and time-consuming, taking 44 clicks simply to update one dashboard.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was asked by the Department of Homeland Security to participate in a pilot program. The goal was to pilot an analytical application for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department that would leverage analysis techniques used for unstructured text analysis with those used in structured data analysis. PNNL’s primary objectives over the project were threefold: Provide a new capability for structured and unstructured data analysis, Evaluate/characterize ICE data, and Be deployable within eighteen months. PNNL wanted to address the question of mixed data: information typically found in structured forms with annotations, case files, reports, etc. They wanted to ensure data sharing and interoperability and to facilitate data exchange between specialized tools.

Blastrac Manufacturing was facing a challenge with its reporting method. The company did not have a consistent reporting method in place and, consequently, preparation of reports for the company’s various needs was tedious. Blastrac’s analysts each spent nearly one whole day per week extracting data from the multiple Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, loading it into several Excel spreadsheets, creating filtering capabilities and establishing pre-defined pivot tables. These massive spreadsheets were often inaccurate and consistently hard to understand, and they were virtually useless for the sales team, which couldn’t work with the complex format. In addition, each consumer of the reports had different needs—while some thought the reports were lacking detail, others thought there was too much.

Ernst & Young's Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services (FIDS) practice works in a broad spectrum of providing analytical services related to identifying factors related to fraud and forensics. They analyze all types of fraud that can be coming from all types of different data sets, whether or not those data sets are transactional data in form. They also try to uncover elements of unusual patterns or unusual behavioral activity within unstructured data sets of text data – such as emails, instant messages, or SMS text messages that are exchanged in an organization from employee to employee. The challenge was to analyze these large volumes of data and present the results in a way that is easily understandable by a variety of individuals across an organization—from analysts and end users right up to C-suite professionals.

AOL, a leading-edge web services company, was facing challenges with its data not being integrated with the corporate data repository. The company was dealing with a massive amount of data, with tens of millions of searches daily, each generating between 20 and 40 rows of data. This resulted in 400 to 800 million records every single day. The company was operating on a push model where the Business Intelligence (BI) team would have to manually pull and send out reports to those who needed them. This process was time-consuming and inefficient.

Kwantum Institute, a market research firm serving major global automotive manufacturers, was struggling with its survey analysis and reporting process. The existing process, which involved a combination of Excel pivot tables, charts, and VBA macros, was not only time-consuming but also produced static and lengthy reports. As a result, clients were losing interest and missing potentially important findings and results. The company needed a survey analysis and reporting tool that would not only improve its internal operational processes but also increase the quality of its customer offerings by structuring results visually. In addition, Kwantum required a solution that was able to access its massive ChoiceMonitor database (up to 200 million rows of data) without impacting the integrity of its other systems. Finally, given the ever-changing market conditions in the automotive industry, Kwantum’s clients required reports and dashboards that offered real-time information as well as the ability to further interact with the data to a degree that static Excel tables don’t allow.

Ferrari and Maserati of North America were facing challenges in their data analysis process. The process of generating and sharing reports for retail sales analysis, service and repair orders, and monthly expenditures was time-consuming and involved manually entering data into Excel files and distributing that static information via email. This method was not only inefficient but also did not allow for real-time interaction with the data.

SuperData, a market intelligence research provider specializing in the video game sector, was struggling with an Excel-based product that couldn't efficiently handle the data from over 40 million video gamers each month. The reports generated were multi-spreadsheet and required customers to dig for insights. The company needed a solution that could handle large data volumes and present insights in an easily digestible format. They also needed to ensure data security, as the data was gathered directly from game companies and shared anonymously. The company initially tried an open-source business intelligence solution, but it didn't meet their needs.

The increase of digitalization brings risks and opportunities alike, and the media industry is no exception to that. The NZZ data analysis team, led by Markus Barmettler, used a Microsoft Excel-based reporting solution in combination with ad-hoc analysis when necessary. In October 2014, the team chose to migrate to a Tableau solution in an effort to be able to quickly react to market opportunities. Before the NZZ team could reap the rewards of new and profitable insights, it needed to redefine and automate its in-house data collection process. “As we were coming from an Excelbased reporting system, we needed to first set up a data warehouse,” says Barmettler.

SK Telecom, a leading wireless communications operator in Korea, has been facing challenges due to the rise in mobile data and signaling traffic, driven by the increasing usage of 3G and 4G devices such as smartphones and tablets. The company has also been dealing with the threat of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and mobile application anomalies. Over the last three years, the number of attacks against their mobile network has increased five-fold. These attacks put additional traffic on an already stressed mobile network infrastructure, making it vital for these attacks to be detected and stopped as soon as possible. Additionally, poorly written mobile applications can cause major problems when popular mobile apps used by millions of subscribers encounter problems, acting like a DDoS attack on the mobile network.

SdV Plurimedia, a leading hosting and Web services provider in France, is held to strict contractual obligations and service level agreements (SLAs) that require it to provide the highest level of data center infrastructure and customer service protection. A majority of SdV’s customers offer public-facing media services that require high performance and 100% uptime. SdV’s customer Web sites are frequently attack targets due to the public and sometimes controversial nature of their content. Therefore, it is common for SdV to see attacks on a daily basis. These attacks not only impact the target customer, but also other customers who share the same data center resources. It’s these types of attacks that would shut down SdV if they didn’t have a DDoS mitigation system in place.

Foreshore Limited, a leading provider of hosting, messaging, storage, distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection and other Internet services to the offshore business world, needed to maintain 100 percent Internet connectivity to optimize quality of service and enhance traffic engineering. The company’s non-stop network infrastructure is meeting the rigorous 24/7 operational requirements of international banks, major e-retailers and electronic payment providers. Foreshore backs its services with 100 percent service level agreements and a six-year track record of no downtime. In an era of global network security threats that are ever-increasing in size and frequency, DDoS detection and mitigation are critical to Foreshore’s continued success and that of its customers.

Bulletproof Networks, a tier-one managed hosting provider in Australia, was facing an increasing number of DDoS attacks on its network. Several of Bulletproof’s customers use its managed cloud service to host business-critical transactional websites. For these customers, site availability is critical to their existence; any amount of downtime can mean significant losses. Bulletproof also hosts a number of sites that are attractive targets for DDoS attacks. One of these sites, a technology forum, includes more than 300,000 active members who have been known to launch attacks at one another over disagreements. As a result, Bulletproof started to see an increasing number of DDoS attacks come across its network. To combat the attacks, Bulletproof put a process in place with its upstream providers. This process enabled the company to contact a provider during an attack to see if the provider could help block it from reaching the data center. The challenge with this approach was two-fold. First, the providers were not as quick to react to the attacks, causing a delay in mitigation and downtime for the hosted sites. Also, the only realistic way for the provider to assist was to blackhole the targeted site. While this stopped flooding to the Internet link, it still left the customer offline.

Netregistry, Australia’s largest provider of domain names and one of the most trusted Web hosts for small business, was facing an increase in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, particularly recent Domain Name System (DNS) reflection attacks. The company provides multiple services—including domain registry, Web hosting and Web design—to more than 500,000 clients. As a hosting provider, Netregistry is no stranger to DDoS attacks and had many processes already in place for handling them. However, the increase in attacks prompted the company to seek help from an outside provider. Netregistry evaluated a number of companies and outsourcing providers that offer DDoS protection services. However, these companies typically only scrub traffic for a single domain name, which was not feasible for Netregistry due to its large and varied customer base.

Hostopia, a leading wholesale provider of private-label Web services, was facing a significant challenge in mitigating the ever-increasing frequency, size, and complexity of DDoS attacks against its network infrastructure and customer services. The technical team at Hostopia had been effective in dealing with DDoS attacks of several gigabits in magnitude, but the effort required was significant. This process required a lot of manual work by several key staff members with very specialized skill sets. Looking to the future, Hostopia realized that scaling its response would be difficult given the anticipated growth in the size and frequency of these attacks. The company was looking for a holistic solution—one that not only would detect DDoS attacks but would also defend against them.

iWeb, a data center operator and web hosting provider, was facing frequent DDoS attacks that were causing downtime for their clients and impacting their revenue. The attacks were not only affecting the targeted client but also causing collateral damage to multiple customers sharing the data center's infrastructure. The company needed to contain the attack as soon as possible to reduce the collateral damage and the time and staff required to manage an attack. iWeb started investing in DDoS protection solutions to get a better overview of their ever-growing network and obtain precise details regarding any DDoS attack, especially its type, size, and origin.

Neo Telecoms, a Paris-based company providing Pan-European and U.S. Internet connectivity and hosting services, was facing challenges in managing its rapidly growing network. The company's in-house developed tools based on open-source code were no longer sufficient as the network expanded to multi-10 Gbps connectivity and a 150 Gbps backbone. Even the commercial tools they had started to fail. The company needed a solution that was easy to use and could provide cost-effective visibility into the entire network.

Easynet Limited, a global, IP-based managed services organization, was facing the challenge of managing, protecting, and supporting a rapidly growing worldwide IP services network. The company provides network, hosting, and telepresence solutions to multinational corporations and has over 3,000 customers and eight million end users utilizing one million network connections to its global IP backbone. The company was experiencing significant growth in its transit and peering business, making it increasingly complex to manually conduct traffic management and peering analysis using in-house tools. Additionally, due to Easynet’s global IP backbone, DDoS attacks were a regular occurrence, especially for some of its bigger hosting customers, such as betting/gaming sites that are prime targets for DDoS attacks.

Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are facing increasing challenges due to the rise in size, frequency, and complexity of DDoS attacks. These challenges include the risk of not having enough capacity to manage very large attacks, staying abreast of latest DDoS attack trends, attack vectors, attackers, attack tools and targets, the constant requirement of training network security personnel and operations staff, retaining experienced, coveted staff that is constantly lured by stiff competition, and maintaining and enhancing their DDoS attack protection infrastructure such as circuits, data centers, customer portals and attack mitigation products.

Comcast Corporation, a leading media, entertainment, and communications company, was faced with the challenge of transitioning its network and services from IPv4 to IPv6. This transition was necessitated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) distributing the last five blocks of IPv4 addresses to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Comcast had to ensure the technological readiness of its entire network and service infrastructure, including core network readiness, support for IPv6 across the back-office systems, and access network IPv6 readiness.

XO Communications, one of the largest service providers in the United States, was facing challenges in managing its rapidly growing network and dealing with traffic congestion. The company had basic visibility into traffic statistics, such as bytes in/out, but this was not granular enough to tell where the traffic was coming from or going to. The company also had to constantly determine if the traffic was legitimate or illegitimate. Removing congestion due to legitimate traffic was fine, but if done for illegitimate traffic, it actually made matters worse. The company knew that Netflow, a technology already embedded in the company’s network infrastructure equipment, had the information they were looking for. However, conducting their own in-house Netflow analysis proved to be a large undertaking due to the huge amount of data that needed to be collected, analyzed and turned into something presentable.

Covad Communications, a leading U.S. service provider, faced the dual challenges of network security and traffic engineering. The company needed to proactively defend against DDoS attacks and optimize network performance. The rising number of network attacks was a significant challenge for the service provider. Customers typically held their providers accountable for such external attacks, viewing them as problems within the provider network and equating them with poor service. Additionally, the extra costs due to attack traffic could add up to tens of thousands of dollars a month. Therefore, the ability to quickly identify and shut down these attacks was key to both customer loyalty and cost-effective operations.

The customer, a central European network service provider (NSP) that offers Internet access, domain name system (DNS), IP address allocation and DDoS attack detection and mitigation services to universities, ministries and research organizations, was using Cisco Guard for DDoS attack detection and mitigation. However, they faced two main problems with Cisco Guard. Firstly, the NSP had a 10 Gbps core backbone network, but Cisco Guard only supported 1.2 Gbps of mitigation, and there were no plans to improve this due to the end-of-sale schedule. Secondly, because the NSP used Peakflow SP for attack detection and Cisco Guard for attack mitigation, its staff was forced to learn two different user interfaces, which made attack mitigation more difficult.

The Bay Lights were officially unveiled on March 5, 2013. Brian VanderZanden, Lead Developer at WPI, knew there would be a surge in traffic to TheBayLights.org leading up to that day, and most likely a huge surge in traffic on the day of the unveiling. WPI has many sites on Cloudflare, including TheBayLights.org. He reached out to Cloudflare to make sure the site was ready to handle the increase in traffic. Cloudflare suggested a few small optimizations (minification, an image that wasn’t proxied because on a “grey cloud” DNS record), one useful reminder (white-list the Cloudflare IPs), and a powerful recommendation: Cache Everything.

Luxury Link, a pioneer in the web-based auction model for luxury travel, was facing the challenge of optimizing their website to ensure visitors get the most out of the experience. Their web property experience includes everything from design to merchandising to site performance to SEO and the conversion funnel. These core fundamentals really matter to Luxury Link: performance, SEO, business intelligence, merchandising and seasonal relevance. They were also looking for a better CDN solution when their current contract was up.

CodeGuard, a service that provides backup and protection for websites, was looking for ways to expand its user base and improve its product. The company wanted to reach out to website owners who were interested in securing their sites. However, reaching out to this audience and getting their feedback for product improvement was a challenge.

The San Francisco Marathon is a popular race that attracts 24,000 runners from all over the globe. The website is crucial for registration, organization during the event weekend, and tracking each runner's race time. However, during the race weekend, the website experiences a 400% increase in traffic. The previous year, the servers failed due to the heavy traffic, leading to disgruntled racers. The challenge was to optimize the website for heavy load and prevent server failure.

LearnThat Foundation was facing a challenge with their website, LearnThat.org. Despite successfully driving traffic to the site, they were struggling to keep visitors engaged. The time spent by visitors on the site was low, indicating a lack of engagement and potentially leading to missed opportunities for the foundation. The foundation had heard about Cloudflare at a local meet-up and decided to sign up, hoping to improve the performance of their site and increase visitor engagement.

FounderLY, a media project that showcases entrepreneurs’ stories, prioritizes the design of its website. The platform is image-heavy and uses CSS and JavaScript, which can slow down the website's loading speed. This is a concern as they want to deliver a fast and seamless experience for their readers worldwide. Additionally, the website serves a lot of videos, and while the videos are not handled by Cloudflare, ensuring the rest of the page loads quickly is crucial to keep visitors on the website while they wait for the videos to start. As a startup, FounderLY needed a cost-effective solution to boost their website performance without spending a fortune. They were also under a tight deadline with limited engineering resources.