This document discusses how a major online media group in China used a SoftLayer-based social analytics application to become the leading sports portal during the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament. Key points: - The media group deployed a social analytics solution on SoftLayer to analyze social media and other online data sources to develop new and changing content throughout the tournament. - This helped them engage fans and provide timely analysis of trends, improving viewership of live shows by 163% and other metrics like page views and clickthrough rates. - SoftLayer's scalability allowed the solution to quickly scale up resources as data volumes increased during peak events, enabling near-real-time analysis. - This differentiated their online sports channel

1. © 2014 IBM Corporation
Eve Online (CCP Games) Moving to IBM
Cloud in 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZhsOvW2Yis

2. What if gaming behaviors could provide direction for new game designs?
• IBM® SPSS® Modeler
Developers have had to guess how player demographics such as age
and location would affect game play and how even slight changes
could increase or reduce defection. Detailed segmentation and
behavioral analysis are revealing how gamers play and what brings
them back for more.
Two social media game titles created by
Enish, a Japanese game developer, have
earned more than three million players by
bridging the virtual and real worlds, letting
players win real restaurant meals and
shopping discounts. To keep older titles
fresh and increase the success rates of
new titles, Enish needed more than
simple intuition to explain why gamers
play and which in-game offers are more
likely to generate revenue.
The Opportunity
Enish, Inc.
What Makes It Smarter
The most successful social media games create a community by providing ongoing
rewards to players, such as increased status or even real-world prizes. Enish is gaining
unprecedented insights into how to create community through sophisticated analysis of
demographics and in-game activities. By analyzing dedicated players’ behaviors,
game-development and marketing teams can quickly adjust game difficulty and offer
highly targeted incentives that keep players coming back to the game as well as
spending money. Enish analyzes demographic data from millions of users and
determines their unique game behaviors to create key performance indicators and
predict how players will respond to change. For example, if a statistically significant
number of players opt out of the game at a certain level, then developers can either
make the game easier or provide greater rewards that sustain play.
Real Business Results
• Reduces by 85 percent, from one week to less than one day, the time required to access
performance data
• Increases potential profitability with higher launch success rates and per-title revenue
• Helps reduce defection rates
Solution Components
Japanese game developer Enish uses detailed analysis of subscriber data and gaming behaviors to understand in-game actions and
create the games of the future, helping players bridge real and virtual worlds.
Media and Entertainment | Business Analytics | Japan

3. What if you could get online gamers to come back for more?
• IBM® SPSS® Modeler Server
• IBM Software Services – SPSS Services
The company now has a detailed understanding of its gamers’
profile and behavior, and uses the insights to support its
investments in current and future game development, retaining
valuable gamers and increasing in-game revenue.
Although this social game and digital
content developer in Japan had successful
mobile social games including one that
had more than two million downloads,
gamers continued to defect. Relying solely
on key performance indicators (KPIs), the
company was limited in identifying gamers’
behavior that could help it gain the insight
needed to get gamers to play longer or
keep coming back.
The Opportunity
A social game and digital content developer for mobile devices in Japan
What Makes It Smarter
Real Business Results
• Increases paid user rate of in-game offerings by 1 percent, resulting in a substantial
increase in sales revenue
• Anticipates a reduction in defection rates due to improved insight into gaming behaviors
and development of targeted offerings
• Boosts the future development of successful game content by providing insights into
gaming behavior
Solution Components
A social game and digital content developer analyzes its online gamers’ behavior to predict when and how to keep them in the
game—and longer, substantially increasing the company’s sales revenue.
Media and Entertainment | Smarter Media | Japan
When the key to generating revenue for online games is in-game offerings, keeping gamers loyal
is high priority. This social game and digital content developer in Japan gains unprecedented
insights into how gamers interact with its social role-playing games by employing a sophisticated
data-mining and predictive modeling solution. The solution continuously mines demographics
and gamer activities to predict those who are likely to defect and when. It can determine when
users are most likely to lose interest in a game or identify the point in the game at which an
intervention is required to prevent defection. The company can determine whether to offer
popular premium items at frequent intervals as gamers progress through the game, guide them
toward in-game advertisements such as its lifestyle website - which may have relevance in both
gaming and real-life realms - or whether a free offer is needed to retain gamer interest. With
better understanding of gamer usage and trends, the company now designs game events and
adjusts the gaming environment more strategically for retention and revenue.

4. What if you could use behavioral analysis to turn a casual gamer into a paying customer?
• IBM® SPSS® Modeler Server
The solution helps the company see exactly what
customers want and what convinces them to pay for its
games. The insights have been indispensable in growing
the company's user base and revenue.
This online game company in Japan built a
social networking platform for its games—an
ideal place to engage and connect its
customers. To make the platform successful,
the company needed to understand how
customers use the site. It built its own
analysis tools, but the homegrown solution
lacked the sophistication needed to guide
targeted marketing campaigns and improve
game development.
The Opportunity
An online game company in Japan
What Makes It Smarter
Games are fun distractions for users but serious business for the companies that develop
them. These companies must persuade customers that a game is worth paying for. This online
game developer adopted powerful statistical analysis capabilities for its social online game
platform to understand how customers play, what they like, what they are willing to buy and
how marketing can influence their behavior. By analyzing detailed in-game behavioral data and
the personal attributes of its customers, the company can predict the lifetime value of each
customer, segment customers accordingly and target them with focused marketing campaigns.
For example, when advertising new games, the company may focus on early adopters who
grow bored with games quickly—a strategy that helps retain power users while capitalizing on
their influence to popularize new games. With ongoing feedback on how the segments respond
to different campaigns and games, the statistical models become increasingly accurate over
time, allowing the company to refine its revenue-generating activities.
Real Business Results
• Expected to increase average revenue per customer by at least 10 percent every year
• Anticipated to increase the percentage of paying customers, resulting in higher revenue
• Increased the number of users while reducing customer acquisition and operating costs
Solution Components
An online game company uses sophisticated statistical analysis to segment customers based on how, when and what games they play,
enabling targeted marketing campaigns and new games to increase average customer revenue by 10 percent every year.
Media and Entertainment | Predictive Analytics | Japan

5. What if you could prevent social media gamers from defecting to the next big thing?
• IBM® SPSS® Modeler Server
Every game has a limited life span. By understanding the behavior of its
most dedicated players, the company can effectively extend the life of
the game and support its investments in current and future game
development. It no longer just guesses why players behave in certain
ways; now it knows for sure.
With more than one million subscribers to
its social media fantasy game, this game
developer definitely has a hit. The game
is free to play, but the company earns
revenue from a small percentage of loyal
subscribers who purchase in-game assets
and hints. Gamers are always seeking the
next thrill, and attrition is expected, so the
developer needed to better understand
how players interact with the game to
slow down the rate of defection and
increase the game’s profitability.
The Opportunity
A social media game developer in Tokyo
What Makes It Smarter
When only 2 percent of social media game players make up 90 percent of game revenue,
keeping those loyal customers is a priority. A social media game developer in Japan is
gaining unprecedented insights into how players interact with its fantasy role-playing game
through sophisticated analysis of demographics, device use and in-game activities. By
analyzing the behaviors of dedicated players, game development and marketing teams
can quickly adjust game difficulty and offer highly targeted incentives that keep players
coming back to the game—and spending money. For example, the solution discovered
that players were more likely to respond to a timed offering with a countdown expiration
than a generic offer, and that game defections occurred mostly during a two-month
summer holiday period. Adjustments to the game itself and tailored messages reduced the
defection rate.
Real Business Results
• Improved profit and loss by approximately JPY2 million
• Reduced the game defection rate by 2 percent
• Provided insights into gaming behavior to increase the likelihood of developing
successful games in the future
Solution Components
A game developer uses detailed analysis of its subscribers and their gaming behaviors to develop games that are fun for players and
profitable for the company.
Media | Business Intelligence and Social Media | Japan

6. SoftLayer technology provides automation, flexibility and enhanced support in
consumer-oriented gaming application space
Music Mastermind is an
entertainment and technology
company dedicated to
simplifying music creation.
Powered by the company's
patented SoundBetter
technology, its cloud-based
solution ZyaMusic allows
consumers to easily create and
share music from tablets and
smartphones. As they prepared
to launch their product, Music
Mastermind needed a more cost-
effective platform than AWS to
support potentially millions of
users worldwide.
• A global presence and
variable consumption to
support the worldwide rollout
of their product
• Estimated savings of
$45,000/month versus the
AWS solution
• An enterprise-class
infrastructure from IBM that
strengthens Music
Mastermind’s position with
potential investors
The Need:
Cloud in Action: Music Mastermind
IBM Softlayer | NA IOT | Media & Entertainment | Approved for Internal Use Only | Stage – Win/Becoming of a reference
The Benefits:The Solution:
• In 2011, Micro Strategies, an IBM
Premier Business Partner, architected a
hybrid cloud infrastructure consisting of
-IBM iDataplex with V7000U
storage in 2 co-lo data centers for
their private cloud to serve
approximately 25,000 users and -
a public cloud (AWS at the time)
for bursting workload to support
the more than 25,000 users.
• In late 2013, Micro Strategies migrated
Music Mastermind off AWS to SoftLayer
for the public cloud portion of their
solution.
• They are currently using a SoftLayer
bare metal server environment and
hourly CCI’s for testing.
• They expect to go into production in late
2013, which will result in significant
hardware needs and Monthly Recurring
Revenue.
In collaboration with:
You Tube Video
Link to Press Release
CRDB Link to Reference
Link to PDF

7. China-based major online media group becomes the leading sports portal during the 2014 FIFA
World Cup tournament with a SoftLayer-based social analytics application
• Propelled Tencent to create a
unique viewer experience and
help differentiate its online
sports channel from other
media platforms. ( esp. its’s
competitor Sina Sports
channel)
• Increased the viewership of live
talk shows by 163 percent with
timely, trending analysis
• Improved overall page views by
54 percent, clickthrough rates
for sports-related content by
134.5 percent and clickthrough
rates for data infographics by
61.2 percent
• Able to quickly scale the
solution in minutes instead of
hours or days as the volume of
data increased during the
tournament and to add more
computation nodes to analyze
that data.
Cloud in Action: Tencent Inc.
• Founded in November 1998,
Tencent, Inc. has grown into one of
China's largest and most popular
Internet portals and one of the
largest Internet communities in
China.
SoftLayer | China IMT | Industry–Media and Entertainment | Approved for External Use | Stage – Reference
Link to CRDB
In Collaboration With:
The Benefits:
The Need:
Tencent wanted to engage fans,
capture the chatter and provide the
most relevant, novel and up-to-date
content and the in-depth
commentary during the World Cup.
• Tencent needed a way to capture
and analyze all the social media
interaction, email posts and Internet
searches to develop new and
changing content to keep up with
fans’ sentiments and interests
throughout the tournament.
“IBM is advantageous in big data analytics,
and the SoftLayer public cloud platform
provides robust IT infrastructure for big
data analytics. We [created] a new model of
reporting sports news to bring the netizens a
new game-watching experience based on
near-real-time data analytics.” - Yongzhi
Wang, deputy editor-in-chief
The Client: The Solution:
• IBM deployed a social analytics
solution called Blue Pulse,
developed by IBM Research -
China, to operate on the SoftLayer
platform
• The Hong Kong datacenter based
virtual server solution analyzed
massive amounts of unstructured
data from the Tencent weibo and
other weibos (social media sites
similar to Twitter)
• Using a web services model and an
open application programming
interface (API) for SL deployment,
the ICloud Services team launched
the Blue Pulse application in just
two days.

8. Cloud in Action: DataHotel Co.,Ltd.
Tokyo-based cloud aggregator provides value add to their social
gaming clients by helping decisions around best cloud configurations
The Solution:
Three month SoftLayer trial of
bare metal single pane
environment so the client can test
latency, speed and other features
essential for gaming
The Need :
• Desire to be a global provider for
Japanese clients and expanding to
acquire international clients and
help their clients go international
with their games and social
applications.
• Searching for best-of-breed
solution to cloud: they are trying to
decide if they should use
SoftLayer or use their own DC
(build vs buy)
• Helping clients go international
with their low-latency required
applications (US & Singapore)
The Client :
• Ability to resell cloud locally
and internationally, and help
their clients reach foreign
markets.
• Resell more value added
services like BCRS and
Monitoring.
• As their clients go global,
have more apps and more
international business, so
DataHotel will be able to
scale up to host the
applications across the world.
• DataHotel is a subsidiary of LINE
Corporation, the top social
communication provider in
Japan,
• DataHotel’s client base are
social, gaming, web hosting
companies.
• DataHotel provides a managed
hosting services for the clients
and as their applications go
global, DataHotel will host those
applications across the world.
In Collaboration With:
Desired Benefits :
IBM SoftLayer| Japan IOT | Industry – Computer Services | Approved for External Use| Stage – External Reference
Video Link ( In Japanese)
CRDB Link to Client Reference

9. © 2014 IBM Corporation
Appendix: Riot Deep Dive

10. © 2014 IBM Corporation39
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015471/League-of-Legends-Scaling-to
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/riak-game-scale?utm_source=infoq&utm_medium=QCon_EarlyAccessVideos&utm_campaign=StrangeLoop2013
Deep Dive:
Overall Architecture
Challenges faced by Riot
1: How to develop a system rapidly, while planning for future
capacity needs?
2: How to quickly develop new features while limiting bugs?
3: How to handle not just monthly changes, but
hourly changes?
4: What happens when you follow the rules and still run into issues?