OpenX today announced that earlier this year, the company completed the migration of the OpenX Exchange onto Google Cloud Platform (GCP), becoming the first major exchange to move completely to the cloud Martech. As of Q3 2019, the entire OpenX business was moved off of all on-premise servers Martech News.
The migration to the cloud positions OpenX as one of the fastest and most scalable exchanges in the industry, future-proofing its technology stack and ensuring constant optimization from the frequent updates made by Google Cloud.
“Moving our technology to GCP has given OpenX a tangible leg up in the advertising technology ecosystem,” said Paul T. Ryan, CTO of OpenX. “We are now able to stop worrying about legacy infrastructure and focus more on our growth categories. We’ve been able to launch new regions of the world in a matter of days, and we’ve been able to tap into machine learning and AI tools that allow us to analyze and process data in ways we weren’t able to before. Our tech stack is getting smarter and more sophisticated by the day, and we have the flexibility to scale our infrastructure in real-time as the business scales and evolves.”
Outside of core infrastructure improvements, OpenX has also seen the following benefits since moving to GCP:
- Rapid International Expansion: With on-premise servers, expanding to new regions required an infrastructure set-up that took several months. Operating on GCP, and adopting infrastructure as code, OpenX has the ability to enter a new region in a matter of days. Earlier this year, the company quickly and easily expanded into Singapore and Southeast Asia and built all local technology elements directly on the cloud with GCP.
- Technology Workforce: Over one quarter of the OpenX technology workforce was previously dedicated to server maintenance and legacy infrastructure. By moving to the cloud, this percentage of the workforce has been shifted to new, high growth areas, such as the development of the company’s people-based marketing platform, OpenAudience, as well as the development of products for the company’s core exchange.
- Releasing Product/Tech Updates in Real Time: With the core exchange business built directly on GCP and with a significant investment in CI/CD, OpenX has the ability to ship code practically instantaneously, something that was not possible with the company’s previous tech infrastructure.
- Leveraging Machine Learning and AI: Using the latest machine learning and AI tools developed by Google Cloud, OpenX is able to analyze inventory and data usage in a more granular way, giving the company new visibility into tech costs and ROI.
“OpenX now operates completely in the public cloud, leveraging Google Cloud’s secure, high performance infrastructure and machine learning capabilities to optimize bidding, improve ad targeting and reduce spam in near real time. Importantly, they’ve also created a tech stack that will sustain high-velocity and new growth well into the future.” – Will Grannis, founder and leader of the Office of the CTO, Google Cloud
More information on the OpenX tech integration with GCP is available through a case study available on the Google Cloud website. View the case study here: https://cloud.google.com/customers/openx/
About OpenX
OpenX powers highly relevant advertising at global scale, delivering quality and value to brands, publishers and consumers across every type of connected screen and ad format. The company’s leading technology aggregates, curates and values consumer interest in real time on one of the world’s largest and highest quality ad exchanges to ensure marketers reach exactly the audience they want. OpenX serves more than 30,000 of the world’s most recognized brands, more than 1,200 publishers and more than 2,000 premium mobile apps.