Metrópoles focuses on technology to improve performance and cut costs with Google Cloud
About Metrópoles
Metrópoles is a communication hub with a news portal ranking among Brazil’s highest in number of visitors. Agility and a digital-focused culture are two of the portal’s key traits.
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About Qi Network
Qi Network specializes in cloud innovation for productivity, infrastructure modernization, and data intelligence.
With support from Qi Network, Metrópoles aimed for stability, user experience, and data security by migrating to the cloud.
Results
- Loading times for the portal’s webpage fell from nine to five seconds
- Virtual machines were reduced from seven to three instances
- Agility and security for software development thanks to a new DevOps routine
30% reduction in hosting costs
Metrópoles, based in Brazil’s Federal District, is a news portal with an accessible, fully digital-focused language. Through its various sections, it aims to inform, entertain, and communicate by providing quality content for its audience. According to Google Analytics, its website currently has 86 million monthly unique visitors.
Visitor growth, first on a regional and then on a nationwide basis, put Metrópoles in the spotlight alongside Brazil’s leading news portals. Currently, the company has around 300 employees working together. By making technology a priority, the company is investing in continuous improvements to serve and reach its audience in an even more integrated way.
The company’s growth and other needs, such as honing the services it delivers, refining its internal activities, and potentially accelerating its website loading times, were among the decisive factors leading Metrópoles to choose migration to Google Cloud.
“Metrópoles was using another platform, but as the site grew, we thought about cutting costs and expanding services. Ensuring agility and stability was also crucial for our operation. That’s when we opted for Google Cloud’s solutions.”
—Allan Rabelo, Head of Technology, MetrópolesThe migration process
This is where the partnership with Qi Network came into play and proved fundamental for the transformation project’s success. All requirements were surveyed and a lift-and-shift was performed after a series of tests. Less than two months later, the site was already running on Google Cloud.
Regarding the technical environment, Google Cloud’s Cloud Load Balancing service proved significantly valuable throughout this journey. This solution handles the portal’s requests and forwards them, balancing traffic and replicating the system in various areas. This made it possible to improve performance and reach the desired availability and security. Cache sections were also configured to support thousands of accesses per second, reducing demand for usage loads.
“We established a 45-day deadline and were able to meet our goals. There was great synergy between the three teams involved in this task, which was essential. We knew this would be a transformation not just for the platform’s employees, but also for the portal’s end user, which is why we were extremely careful,” says Marcos Gileno Martins Santos, Qi Network’s Customer Solutions Architect.
One of the main products used by Metrópoles today is Compute Engine, which makes it possible to manage the new infrastructure. This solution also allows virtual machines to be created based on the site’s usage demand. There’s also Cloud SQL for everything database; Cloud Functions to support automated tasks; and Cloud Storage for storage issues.
Benefits that surpass expectations
Using Google Cloud’s tools, the team managed to reduce the number of virtual machines used from seven to three instances. The solution’s scalability is an ideal fit for the site, since a small volume of VMs can be used in some periods and usage can be increased to match demand during peak times.
“The results we noticed include a reduction in computing and memory use and cost savings. We maintained high performance as it is easy to reduce VM volumes and automate operations.”
—Allan Rabelo, Head of Technology, MetrópolesThe company reaped other benefits as well, including the creation of DevOps routine to develop systems with integration to Google Cloud, an activity that provides agility, security, and stability. Metrópoles also achieved hosting cost savings of 30% and increased loading speeds for its website (from nine to five seconds), positively impacting user experience.
After getting that high-performance guarantee, the portal aims to keep innovating and expanding its services. The team is counting on Qi Network’s expertise to help them learn about other Google Cloud solutions and, in seasonal meetings, plan for the future.
“There is a marketing data warehouse project for Metrópoles and we are still holding meetings. The goal is to create a big data environment for the portal’s advertisers, but we know the company plans to use new products and modernize its entire environment.”
—Marcos Gileno Martins Santos, Customer Solutions Architect, Qi NetworkTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Metrópoles
Metrópoles is a communication hub with a news portal ranking among Brazil’s highest in number of visitors. Agility and a digital-focused culture are two of the portal’s key traits.
About Qi Network
Qi Network specializes in cloud innovation for productivity, infrastructure modernization, and data intelligence.