Creative Technology Case Study
How Netmaker helped power global live events with a leading AV company
Eurovision 2024
Eurovision kicked off in May, 2024 to much fanfare. With a venue in Malmö, Sweden, the event featured artists from over 30 countries. A huge success, Eurovision 2024 broke broadcasting records, with a reach of over 163 million viewers across Europe. Attendees from over 80 countries travelled to Sweden to watch the event take place in person.
Thousands of staff worked tirelessly to make this audio and visual spectacle a success. By every measure, they achieved their goal. Key to this success was the efforts of Creative Technology, a solutions provider for live events who delivered ALL of the audio, lighting, and video technology required for Eurovision 2024.
Thousands of staff worked tirelessly to make this audio and visual spectacle a success. By every measure, they achieved their goal. Key to this success was the efforts of Creative Technology, a solutions provider for live events who delivered ALL of the audio, lighting, and video technology required for Eurovision 2024.
About Creative Technology
As big as Eurovision is, it was just one of Creative Technology's many projects. From sporting events to conferences across the globe, CT is there to provide the AV services that are critical to the success of the events. CT works across the spectrum of services, from design, to installation, to broadcasting.
The level of effort required to support these projects is immense, and IT is at the core of this work. Support staff must be able to manage services both on-prem, at remote event sites, and in the cloud on AWS. The integration of these components is key for data transfer, monitoring, management, troubleshooting, and software updates.
The level of effort required to support these projects is immense, and IT is at the core of this work. Support staff must be able to manage services both on-prem, at remote event sites, and in the cloud on AWS. The integration of these components is key for data transfer, monitoring, management, troubleshooting, and software updates.
The Infrastructure Challenge
"We used to waste a lot of time gaining access to the various infrastructure for which we're responsible. It was extremely complicated. We needed to access each of these environments separately, with different solutions, which created a lot of chaos and uncertainty," says Bastian Stolk, Business Solutions Manager at Creative Technology.”
"We needed to get this under control, and create a central system for managing access. We tried ZeroTier, custom VPN tunnels, CISCO meraki, and Tailscale. With all of them, either the pricing structure was way off, or the solution didn't meet our requirements."
The Solution: Netmaker
When CT started trialing Netmaker, they quickly discovered a solution that could meet all their infrastructure management needs.
"We loved the mesh topology, which let us connect all of our environments together into a fabric, across the globe. It gave us one central access and connectivity solution, regardless of what infrastructure we managed."
"The speed of deployment is great," continued Bastian. "We can integrate new environments instantly. We also love the interoperability with WireGuard, which gives us a lot of flexibility in deployment options. This has made it easy to deploy everywhere, and it gives us the relay functionality for reaching the more restrictive environments."
Results & Benefits
Netmaker has brought down deployment time for projects at Creative Technology considerably, and decreased the complexity involved in managing these projects. CT also relies on Netmaker's centralized analytics to roll out observability to all their teams, granting real-time insights into their infrastructure, to solve problems quickly.
Beyond the ease of use for operators, Netmaker has enabled Creative Technology's support staff to work remotely, a huge win for both CT, and for their customers.
Beyond the ease of use for operators, Netmaker has enabled Creative Technology's support staff to work remotely, a huge win for both CT, and for their customers.
"Netmaker has allowed us to do a lot more work on advanced deployments, and our company is now much more comfortable working fully remote on projects. We can manage problems remotely, for which we used to send someone out to the field. Netmaker makes us faster, more efficient, and more secure."
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