How the Gcore public cloud helped Wargaming to accelerate product testing and work with partners more efficiently

Wargaming is a well-known multiplayer game developer and publisher. In over 20 years, they have launched more than 15 games for various platforms. Among them are such hits as World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes.

For Wargaming, the question of using a public cloud was very serious. According to Dmitry Kuryanovich, the Head of Maintenance at Wargaming, the main requirement was that resources had to be provided quickly when needed.

To acquire such resources, the world-famous developer turned to a proven vendor—Gcore—whose hosting, content delivery network, and media platform they had been using for several years.

In 2019, Gcore launched its public cloud—a multifunctional virtual data center that enables customers to quickly scale up their IT infrastructure, accelerate the development of products and services, and deploy AI applications. This was the solution Wargaming had been looking for.

“We have two uses for the Gcore public cloud. One part of the cloud is integrated within the security perimeter of the company, and the other is outside the perimeter, meaning it functions as a classic public cloud.”

Dmitry Kuryanovich, Head of Maintenance at Wargaming

Why do companies migrate to clouds?

In any large company, the process of purchasing equipment takes a long time. As a result, the development, testing, and launching of new products and services are often slowed down. In addition, such business processes complicate the planning and work during periods of peak infrastructure loads, such as during holidays, sales periods, or, in the case of games, regular releases.

To reduce the time-to-market of their products and services, more and more companies choose third-party solutions instead of building their own (often complex) infrastructure since connecting such solutions takes just a few hours. The famous company Wargaming is one such organization.

How does Wargaming use the Gcore public cloud?

The main load of the internal part of the public cloud is focused on testing new features and services of various Wargaming projects. The well-coordinated interaction of development and testing teams, the use of best practices, and the Gcore cloud infrastructure allow the company to significantly reduce the time-to-market.

At the same time, the cloud is already being used for development tasks. For example, a number of virtual machines were recently launched in the cloud for a tactical game about special forces. Caliber is currently undergoing Open Beta testing.

“We use tens of thousands of virtual machines. Transferring the entire development to the public cloud all at once is a task that requires time and caution. Currently, we are testing the interaction between our internal resources and the Gcore public cloud.”

Dmitry Kuryanovich, Head of Maintenance at Wargaming

As for the outer part of the public cloud, Wargaming turns to it when the company urgently needs resources from outside its own security perimeter.

Dmitry Kuryanovich explained that there are always people in the company who approach the IT department and ask for resources to be allocated to them with the added request that they be able to set up and manage those resources themselves.

“For example, there may be a team working on a test prototype together with external developers. The outer part of the Gcore public cloud is perfectly suited for such scenarios. Wargaming takes security very seriously, so it’s more difficult to allow a person from outside into our internal resources than to place machines in a public cloud. Such tasks require an isolated capacity that doesn’t have access to our repositories, to neighboring virtual machines, and so on,” Dmitry Kuryanovich added.

“I’m happy with the Gcore public cloud, both in terms of basic functionality and the analytics and billing model provided. In your personal account, you can see visual graphs that display the statistics of resources consumed. It’s clear what and where we launched and how it works. In combination with per-minute billing, we have a tool that performs the tasks assigned to it. We are listened to and heard. The Gcore team regularly considers proposals for adding more functionality, and technical support responds to our requests within 15 minutes. This is why we continue to integrate our systems with the Gcore cloud.”

Dmitry Kuryanovich, Head of Maintenance at Wargaming