Insights for gaming companies on how to effectively adopt the right IT solutions to generate more customers, revenues, and business efficiency.

1. WHITE PAPER: KVH Media and Gaming Solutions
How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure
to Maximize the Gaming Experience
Insights for gaming companies on how to effectively adopt the
right IT solutions to generate more customers, revenues, and
business efficiency
Table of Contents
2 Introduction
2 Ensure Fastest Time to Market
3 Meet Growing Demand for High-speed Gaming
4 Leverage Scalable Infrastructure Solutions
5 Conclusion
6 About KVH
Copyright© 2012 by KVH Co. LTD
All Rights Reserved. Not to be copied or reproduced without express permission of KVH Co LTD
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2. How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure to Maximize the Gaming Experience
Introduction Ensure Fastest Time to Market
Competition in Asia’s online gaming market is Asia-based gaming companies are quickly
fierce and presents increasing demands on establishing a solid global presence and customer
companies in the gaming industry to deliver more base. In Japan, Gree reached record high net
entertaining, unique, and interactive games while sales of 158.2 billion yen (approx. US$2 billion) for
seeking cost efficiencies in software development FY2012 3 , showing 147% YoY growth, and DeNA
and distribution. The sheer size and continuous reached sales revenues of 47.6 billion yen (approx.
growth of this market also presents the challenge US$608.8 million) for Q1 2012 alone 4 . As
of standing out among competitors and grabbing competition heightens with gaming companies
consumers’ attention. For example, Japan has a striving to stay ahead of the curve by releasing
multi-billion dollar social gaming market and over games before customer demands change and
39 million active gamers1, over half of the entire evolve, speed to market and agility have become
South Korean population played online games in key factors for success.
2011, and the Chinese market revenue of
browser-based games is expected to grow by Consequently, scalable cloud environments that
over 40% in 20122. allow companies to flex their IT environment as
demand requires will enable the delivery of more
With this continuous and rapid increase in demand videos, music, games, and other media
comes the need among game developers and on-demand, resulting in faster and more flexible
suppliers for IT solutions that enable them to deliver ways for improved profits and competitive
new games as quickly as possible, minimize lag advantage.
and downtime, and maximize engagement with
their end-users. Today, the range of service providers that can
meet these demands is few, though growing.
This whitepaper aims to outline how gaming Gaming organizations should ensure they
companies can leverage high-speed, low-latency leverage an agile service provider that can not
networks and flexible IT infrastructure to meet only customize a solution to meet their particular
these needs.
3
GREE, Inc. 2012, Financial Results for the Fourth Quarter of the
1
。人万 は口人ザーユムーゲ 2011,
トイエリクアィデメ社会式株 3,900 Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2012, viewed 20 September 2012,
刊発」 10
業 産 ム ー ゲ 「 書 白る す 瞰 俯 を 年 の 界 業 ム ー ゲ
、 Decade , <http://v3.eir-parts.net/EIR/View.aspx?template=ir_material&sid=1
ValuePress!, viewed 22 May 2012, 7752&code=3632>
4
<http://www.value-press.com/pressrelease/88532>. DeNAーエ・ヌエ・ーィデ社会式株 2012, 2012 第度年 1 業期半四
2
Gaudiosi, John 2012, Asia Leads The Way In Global Online Gaming 績 告 報 ご の , viewed 20 September 2012,
Trends, Forbes, viewed 20 September 2012, <http://v3.eir-parts.net/EIRNavi/DocumentNavigator/ENavigatorBod
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/09/17/asia-leads- y.aspx?cat=ir_material&sid=17624&code=2432&ln=ja&tlang=ja&tca
the-way-in-global-online-gaming-trends/> t=ir_material&disp=simple&groupsid=5343>
Copyright© 2012 by KVH Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved
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3. How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure to Maximize the Gaming Experience
needs, but also implement that solution swiftly and in bandwidth speed, including Malaysia at 84%,
smoothly with minimal disruption to their business Singapore at 47%, Thailand at 38%, and Taiwan at
processes. The faster the IT infrastructure can be 36%.
implemented, the faster the games can be taken
to market. Any company in the online gaming industry will
undoubtedly need to understand and be able to
effectively address the need and growing
Meet Growing Demand for expectations for high-speed connectivity and
media downloads, as well as the resulting
High-speed Gaming extremely low tolerance among consumers for lag.
As competition is fierce, gamers will easily switch to
Asia is the global leader in average bandwidth
a newer, more engaging game if left to wait for
speeds. South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong
even a second or two too long.
showed the fastest average bandwidth speeds in
2012, with South Korea reaching an average
For gaming companies to retain their end-users
speed of 15.7 Mbps in Q1 2012 (refer to tables
and prolong the use of their games as much as
below), a significant lead in front of the 2.6 Mbps
possible, they need to leverage high-speed,
global average. While these countries are
low-latency networks that can accommodate
pioneering high-speed online connectivity, many
high amounts of high-speed traffic and
other Asian markets are quickly catching up and
unpredictable peaks in bandwidth demand.
showing tremendous year over year improvements
2 Average Measured Connected Speed by Country 2 Peak Internet speeds of Asian countries
(Source: Akamai) (Source: Akamai)
Copyright© 2012 by KVH Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved
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4. How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure to Maximize the Gaming Experience
International gaming companies, in particular, expected success or uptake of a game and,
need to ensure the physical network between therefore, how much server space, bandwidth,
them and their customers is as short and fast as and security is necessary to manage this traffic.
possible to reduce network latency. For example, Purchasing, implementing, and managing an
for China-based gaming companies targeting extensive server environment entails high initial
Japan-based gamers, although leveraging a and on-going costs, and also requires an on-site,
China-based network provider may seem simpler on-demand team of experts that can attend to
to find and work with, the network will span from the servers regularly and independently address
China to Japan before reaching the end-user, power outages, failures, issues that arise in times of
which would slow down the gaming experience, natural disasters, and more. For most gaming
potentially driving the customer away and companies that aim to focus their efforts, staff,
minimizing the chance of them recommending and resources on developing and delivering
the game to friends. Meanwhile, a Japan-based industry-leading games, this is a very costly and
network provider will minimize network latency inefficient option.
and optimize the end-user experience, as well as
provide a greater reach across Japan. Flexible and reliable infrastructure-as-a-service
(IaaS) and cloud solutions provide gaming
Furthermore, international gaming companies will companies with an IT environment that allows for
need their service provider to be able to support fluctuations in traffic and can securely handle high
their network services with reliable high compute volumes of data, even during peaks in demand.
power that can manage, process, and deliver By outsourcing these operations, companies can
high volumes of data traffic at high speeds. This will make significant savings on infrastructure costs as
add to a smoother, more engaging, and more they eliminate the extra expenses of
enjoyable user experience. Looking at the bottom over-purchasing infrastructure in times of low
line, being able to deliver faster connectivity will demand, and also save the time and business
enable faster downloads, promote more online productivity wasted on waiting for more servers to
activity, and lead to greater revenues. be purchased, implemented, and set up when
demand is unexpectedly high. In the latter case,
Leverage Scalable not having enough compute power to manage
data traffic can easily lead to major lag and/or
Infrastructure Solutions downtime, which will inevitably drive away existing
and potential players.
When launching a new game, particularly in the
fast-moving and rapidly evolving online gaming
Ideally, the service provider will be able to support
market, it can be difficult to determine the
their IaaS and cloud services with reliable security
Copyright© 2012 by KVH Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved
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5. How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure to Maximize the Gaming Experience
services, 24 x 7 monitoring and service desk and customized IT solutions that address the exact
support, extensive managed services, and needs of the company and their expected needs
professional services for a complete and optimal with upcoming product launches, a low-latency
end-to-end solution. For international organizations, international network that allows for a smooth
bilingual capabilities in their language and the online gaming experience on an international
local language that exist across their service scale, and flexible IaaS and cloud solutions that
providers’ organizational structure, from the can effectively handle fluctuations in demand
service desk and operations to the sales and and ensure mission-critical information is
management teams, will enable smooth utilization processed within a highly secure IT environment.
of the solutions and ensure that issues are handled
as swiftly as possible to minimize any negative For international companies, the challenges are
impact to their company and services in cases of greater and come with higher risks, especially for
incidents. those newly entering Asia’s unique consumer
market and product demand is unpredictable. As
Conclusion well as needing multilingual support offered in the
local language and the language commonly
Gaming companies are increasingly being faced used internally, gaming companies should look to
with the challenges associated with high service providers that have a strong local
competition, expensive infrastructure costs, presence in their target markets, including locally
growing consumer expectations on internet and based scalable infrastructure and on-site
download speeds, and a lack of internal resources engineers to ensure optimal product performance,
to manage complex IT operations and minimize network latency between the
management. company’s IT environment and end-users, and
allow for maximum flexibility and cost-efficiency
The most cost-efficient and effective way to throughout peaks and fluctuations in product
address these challenges is to adopt integrated demand and data traffic.
Copyright© 2012 by KVH Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved
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6. How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure to Maximize the Gaming Experience
About KVH
KVH is an Asia Pacific IT Services and Data Center Services Provider established in Japan. KVH’s
Information Delivery Platform delivers integrated cloud and network solutions and best-in-class service to
its customers. KVH owns infrastructure and provides services that enable clients to store, process, protect
and deliver their vital business information. KVH provides IT Services, Cloud Services, Data Center Services,
Managed Network Services, and Professional Services.
KVH has a presence in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul/ Busan, and
Chicago, and serves over 1,900 customers in broad industry segments such as financial services,
manufacturing, media, gaming, and e-commerce. More information on KVH can be found at
www.kvh.co.jp/en/
Copyright© 2012 by KVH Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved
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