About ProSoccerData
ProSoccerData is an organisation that offers a complete solution for clubs and federations that prioritise efficient and effective youth development. Their mindset is very similar to ours, young at heart and yet professional. It is a pleasure to work with them.
Why AWS for ProSoccerData
Choosing the right cloud provider involves considering various factors. Most organisations already have a preference when starting out. Windows-oriented users and large enterprises often choose Azure, since Microsoft brings a long-standing reputation of stability and reliability. On the other hand, developers working with open source, PHP or Java often avoid Azure and are more drawn to platforms like AWS or Google Cloud.
Still, the best choice goes far beyond personal preference. That is why, in the case of ProSoccerData, we conducted thorough research before reaching a conclusion. For a client with international ambitions, AWS’s global presence was a decisive factor, especially regarding their operations in China. Hosting in China presents unique challenges, which already limited our options. Since only AWS and Azure were viable providers there, we ultimately chose AWS based on their technology stack.
What we did for ProSoccerData
Situation analysis
ProSoccerData’s applications were not new and were hosted with a provider that had already been acquired by another party. Service quality had declined, prompting the team to search for better options. Given their international approach with a presence in countries like Japan and China, AWS seemed like a good fit.
During the testing phase, it became clear that working with a cloud provider comes with many challenges. Despite offering a wide range of ready-made services, AWS still leaves a lot of the basics up to you. At the end of the day, a developer is not an operations engineer. The ProSoccerData team understood this well. Their mission is to build a solid application, not to ensure that hosting is running smoothly.
Level27’s view on cloud computing
A cloud provider only guarantees the functioning of individual services, which often falls short of what clients expect. For example, EBS (Elastic Block Storage) is designed with an annual failure rate of 0.2 percent. If you do not design your architecture properly with redundancy or backups, you are at risk. AWS does not automatically create snapshots or backups, you have to configure those yourself. Monitoring, capacity planning and reporting also require manual setup. If you do not make the right decisions, costs can quickly spiral out of control.
Level27’s approach is to ensure the correct implementation of all cloud services and manage the platform afterward.
This remains a sensitive topic. We are not suggesting that developers cannot make the right decisions or that we know everything. On the contrary, we are very aware of our own capabilities and have the utmost respect for skilled developers.
What we do want to highlight is that it is nearly impossible for developers to stay fully up to date with the constantly evolving world of cloud platforms while also focusing on application development. That is exactly where our expertise lies, and the synergy between hosting partner and development team is what we aim for.
In short, we take responsibility where the cloud provider does not. We guarantee that the application works correctly and we do this with full attention to cost control.
So what exactly did we do for ProSoccerData
In a fast-moving business like ProSoccerData, choices must be made. The first priority was setting up an environment to serve a Japanese client.
We began by configuring the AWS account with proper security settings and permissions. Then we set up VPCs and VPNs in several AWS regions. We did not limit ourselves to Japan, because once an application is running, changes are hard to implement. We also installed EC2 instances to host the applications, with special attention to disk encryption. Hosting in the cloud does not mean automatically trusting that data is safe. Finally, we assisted with deploying the Java applications. All steps were completed within the scope of a fixed-budget project.
After the successful completion of that project, our collaboration continued. The next phase involved migrating the infrastructure from the Belgian hosting provider to AWS in the nearest region, Ireland. The focus was on creating order from chaos while avoiding downtime. After completing this second project, we had already built a solid infrastructure.
