NetApp Case Studies GumGum Optimizes Ad Targeting with AI and Cloud Infrastructure

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	GumGum Optimizes Ad Targeting with AI and Cloud Infrastructure NetApp

GumGum Optimizes Ad Targeting with AI and Cloud Infrastructure

NetApp

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries	Cement Construction & Infrastructure
Applicable Functions	Logistics & Transportation Product Research & Development
Use Cases	Construction Management Infrastructure Inspection
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
Challenge	GumGum, a company that uses artificial intelligence to determine the context of a webpage and match targeted ads, faced a significant challenge in managing its computing infrastructure. The company's proprietary AI services required a large volume of computing infrastructure with variable demand. While AWS cloud was a solution, the costs were high, especially for AI workloads using GPU instances. The company's success led to rapidly increasing costs in line with the demands on their highly scalable infrastructure. The demands were cyclical, with ad serving varying throughout the year. At peak times, GumGum's Ad Server application received over 18 million requests per minute, requiring more than 130 AWS virtual machines to be provisioned. The company's costs grew to around $120k per month for EC2 on just one of their four Ad Server data centers. GumGum needed a solution that would help them use spot instances, save money, be easy for limited staff to use, and guarantee uptime. Read More
About Customer	GumGum is a company that uses artificial intelligence to determine the context of a webpage and match targeted ads with the page. The company's AI systems scan images, text, and video on the page to make these matches. GumGum's services require a large volume of computing infrastructure with variable demand. The company's success has led to rapidly increasing costs in line with the demands on their highly scalable infrastructure. GumGum operates four Ad Server data centers, with the largest receiving up to 18 million requests per minute at peak times. Read More
Customer Name	GumGum Read More
Solution	GumGum turned to Spot by NetApp to meet its needs. Spot offered Elastigroup, a fully managed service for provisioning existing applications on spot instances. The application's ability to predict and preempt spot terminations meant that the availability of applications running on these instances was guaranteed, backed by an SLA. Spot also addressed GumGum's deployment problems. Previously, GumGum was operating on in-place deployment through CodePlay, which resulted in capacity drops and production issues. Using Spot to create a blue-green deployment, GumGum could deploy the entire cluster at once, maximizing capacity and performance, identifying errors more rapidly, and resulting in 50% faster deployments. Additionally, GumGum used Spot Ocean analytics to monitor and right-size its AWS instances. Ocean compared the historical CPU and memory usage of spot instances and predicted future demand based on the past. It also helped GumGum maintain insights into development costs. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Applicable Industries

Cement

Construction & Infrastructure

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Construction Management

Infrastructure Inspection

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Challenge

GumGum, a company that uses artificial intelligence to determine the context of a webpage and match targeted ads, faced a significant challenge in managing its computing infrastructure. The company's proprietary AI services required a large volume of computing infrastructure with variable demand. While AWS cloud was a solution, the costs were high, especially for AI workloads using GPU instances. The company's success led to rapidly increasing costs in line with the demands on their highly scalable infrastructure. The demands were cyclical, with ad serving varying throughout the year. At peak times, GumGum's Ad Server application received over 18 million requests per minute, requiring more than 130 AWS virtual machines to be provisioned. The company's costs grew to around $120k per month for EC2 on just one of their four Ad Server data centers. GumGum needed a solution that would help them use spot instances, save money, be easy for limited staff to use, and guarantee uptime.

About Customer

GumGum is a company that uses artificial intelligence to determine the context of a webpage and match targeted ads with the page. The company's AI systems scan images, text, and video on the page to make these matches. GumGum's services require a large volume of computing infrastructure with variable demand. The company's success has led to rapidly increasing costs in line with the demands on their highly scalable infrastructure. GumGum operates four Ad Server data centers, with the largest receiving up to 18 million requests per minute at peak times.

Customer Name

GumGum

Solution

GumGum turned to Spot by NetApp to meet its needs. Spot offered Elastigroup, a fully managed service for provisioning existing applications on spot instances. The application's ability to predict and preempt spot terminations meant that the availability of applications running on these instances was guaranteed, backed by an SLA. Spot also addressed GumGum's deployment problems. Previously, GumGum was operating on in-place deployment through CodePlay, which resulted in capacity drops and production issues. Using Spot to create a blue-green deployment, GumGum could deploy the entire cluster at once, maximizing capacity and performance, identifying errors more rapidly, and resulting in 50% faster deployments. Additionally, GumGum used Spot Ocean analytics to monitor and right-size its AWS instances. Ocean compared the historical CPU and memory usage of spot instances and predicted future demand based on the past. It also helped GumGum maintain insights into development costs.

Impact #1	The use of Spot by NetApp has brought significant operational benefits to GumGum. The company has been able to manage its variable demand and high computing infrastructure needs more effectively. The ability to predict and preempt spot terminations has ensured the availability of applications running on these instances. The use of blue-green deployment has maximized capacity and performance, allowing for faster identification of errors. The use of Spot Ocean analytics has enabled GumGum to monitor and right-size its AWS instances, preventing wasted money from oversize instances and poor performance from undersize instances. Spot has also helped GumGum maintain insights into development costs, a typical shortcoming of a containerized development infrastructure.

Impact #1

The use of Spot by NetApp has brought significant operational benefits to GumGum. The company has been able to manage its variable demand and high computing infrastructure needs more effectively. The ability to predict and preempt spot terminations has ensured the availability of applications running on these instances. The use of blue-green deployment has maximized capacity and performance, allowing for faster identification of errors. The use of Spot Ocean analytics has enabled GumGum to monitor and right-size its AWS instances, preventing wasted money from oversize instances and poor performance from undersize instances. Spot has also helped GumGum maintain insights into development costs, a typical shortcoming of a containerized development infrastructure.

Benefit #1	Saving of approximately $500K annually on infrastructure costs
Benefit #2	50% faster deployments with Spot's blue-green deployment
Benefit #3	Cost savings from right-sizing AWS instances with Spot Ocean analytics

Benefit #1

Saving of approximately $500K annually on infrastructure costs

Benefit #2

50% faster deployments with Spot's blue-green deployment

Benefit #3

Cost savings from right-sizing AWS instances with Spot Ocean analytics

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Overview

GumGum Optimizes Ad Targeting with AI and Cloud Infrastructure

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit