Citynews

From north to south, the whole of Italy is constantly connected, thanks to OVHcloud

From start-up to national publishing group in just a few years; Citynews was founded in 2010 with 5 active titles, which increased to 51 by 2022, with more than 1,300 news stories produced every day, 800,000 registered users and 81% national coverage.

With more than 30 million unique visitors and 200 million page views every month, Citynews needed a highly stable infrastructure: for this reason, it turned to OVHcloud in order to have access to dedicated servers, used both by the internal team - that is, more than 200 journalists scattered throughout the country - and by users who visit the group's sites.

Citynews' requirements: power, quality and infinite bandwidth

The rapid growth experienced by Citynews meant that the co-located infrastructure in data centres in Milan was no longer adequate for its changing needs. More specifically, Citynews needed flexible, scalable, high-performance infrastructure, supported by secure and always-on connectivity. With this in mind, after an in-depth assessment phase, the digital publisher decided to rely on OVHcloud, which was able to meet Citynews' requirements, thanks to features such as:

• the option to renew the machines as and when required, without being tied to the classic contractual constraint of 36/48 months;
• optimised connectivity;
• a hardware offer that, in terms of quality, is absolutely on a par with that aimed at the international market;
• eliminating the need for visits to the data centre for manual intervention in the event of breakdowns.

As concerns technical requirements, Citynews laid down a series of must-haves:

• vRack a virtual rack technology which enables the connection of even more data centres within the same network, simplifying routing and VPN configurations and making it possible to work as if you were inside the private data centre, but with servers distributed on one or more data centres;
• high-quality, powerful hardware;
• "Infinite" bandwidth.

"OVHcloud allows us to have a very private, dedicated environment. The advantage is that we can undertake our work activities at very high speed, with total simplicity and transparency, without having to manage other hardware/software components that would complicate everyday work."

Riccardo Rodella, Founder & DevOps Leader - Citynews

Flexibility and immediate availability, the perfect combination

Citynews depends on OVHcloud for both classic and more complex services, including: dedicated servers, vRack, Subnet, Subnet.ip, Public Cloud, VPS, DNS domains - thanks to the excellent cost/quality ratio – Anycast and API management, an important function for automating processes.

Given the more than positive initial experience, the group decided to use OVHcloud also for other services, after first purchasing some dedicated servers early on in the collaboration.

Citynews mentioned that OVHcloud solutions offer the possibility of instant access to quality hardware, without having to go through traditional commercial channels, especially when servers need to be added in real time.

What impressed the company's IT department most was OVHcloud's capacity to make the server ready and available in just 120 seconds and the option to expand the infrastructure without having the usual two month waiting period for hardware supply. An essential consideration for a constantly growing editorial group, where video and image quality continue to increase, resulting in an ever-increasing demand for bandwidth.

"Just one click and you can connect everything, any time of day or night, including at weekends."

 

 Stefano Molisso, System Admin Lead – Citynews

OVHcloud's Smart Cloud: simple, multi-local, accessible, reversible & transparent.

OVHcloud: affordable and foreseeable costs, high performance and constant innovation

Last year, during a serious breakdown in France - where the Citynews servers were located - the latter was able, in just 30 minutes, to buy as many as 5 new servers: OVHcloud's offer is extremely flexible and also allows customers to constantly test new services and technologies. None of this is possible when relying on a traditional Cloud Provider with co-located servers.

This flexibility is also evident when it comes to productivity: Citynews was able to activate POC - Proof of Concept - services on real machines at low costs, carrying out tests and analyses for a few months and then deciding which to actually implement, based on needs at that precise moment, without continuous delays and without spending significant sums on classic Cloud Providers.

"In just 4 hours, our services were all up and running in a new location. This rapid and exclusive access mode turned a negative experience into a positive one, resolving a real disaster in a short time."

Riccardo Rodella, Founder & DevOps Leader - Citynews

In terms of costs, before opting for OVHcloud's services, the company had also considered solutions from other players, involving "exorbitant" levels of investment, especially due to the bandwidth required for the amount of multimedia content it creates on a daily basis: since the Citynews operations are directly dependent on the quality of the bandwidth, OVHcloud was the obvious choice, both in terms of quality and cost.
 

"The greatest advantage relates to the flexibility and benefits resulting from the constant and continuous process of innovation and development of OVHcloud."

Stefano Molisso, System Admin Lead – Citynews