PressLogic: Keeping brands on-trend in the online media space with Google Cloud
About PressLogic
Founded in 2016, PressLogic is a media commerce company based in Hong Kong specializing in digital content creation and social media marketing. Besides distributing creative online content for brands across more than 10 of its websites, apps and social media accounts, the startup also provides data-driven insights on social media trends through MediaLens, its self-developed analytics system. Its media channels currently have more than 100 million monthly content impressions in total.
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About Microfusion
Microfusion was established in 2007 and is the Service Partner of Google Cloud. Microfusion has focused on providing one-stop solutions and consulting – Assessment, Planning, Implementation, and Management to help customers embark on their cloud and digital journeys.
As of today, Microfusion has worked with more than 2,000 customers from public and private sectors including government, high-tech, gaming, media, finance, manufacturers, retailers, e-commerce, medical, and educational institutions to expand their businesses to the world.
To offer compelling online media content and social media trend insights for customers in a more cost-effective way, PressLogic leverages the serverless technologies and global network of Google Cloud to enhance service quality while reducing operational costs.
Google Cloud results
- Helps save 30% of operational costs and free up more resources for product development with serverless technologies
- Reduces app latency from high latency to just under 500 milliseconds with Cloud Load Balancing
- Shortens data query time by more than 12X with BigQuery
Eliminates poor website performance caused by traffic fluctuations
Online media has become a battleground for organizations to run marketing campaigns. To develop and implement the most effective online marketing strategies, companies need to keep up with the latest online media trends and gain a deep understanding of their target audiences' preferences and interests.
PressLogic is dedicated to helping enterprises realize successful online marketing strategies. Founded in 2016, the Hong Kong-based media commerce company has been using its expertise in content creation to produce impactful branded content that are distributed across its more than 10 online media channels ranging from websites, apps to social media accounts. The startup also provides its enterprise customers with data-driven insights into social media trends through its self-developed analytics platform named MediaLens. Currently, its media channels have more than 700 million content impressions in total, mostly coming from audiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Korea and Malaysia.
"Our mission is to create a new media commerce ecosystem that provides compelling content and supports effective online marketing campaigns," says Edward Chow, founder & CTO at PressLogic. "As the online media landscape is constantly changing, we need to operate in the most cost-effective way to stay agile and keep up with the latest trends."
"We only had a few engineers to manage the cloud infrastructure of our services, so we needed a more powerful public cloud platform that enables us to offer quality services with minimal operations resources. Google Cloud provides the tools that meet our business needs the most."
—Edward Chow, Founder & CTO, PressLogicPreviously, PressLogic used virtual machines (VMs) on a different public cloud platform to run its online media channels and MediaLens. However, since PressLogic has more than 10 media services, managing and scaling all its VMs sometimes required more effort than its small IT team could afford. The cloud platform also only offered region-based infrastructure, which made it challenging for PressLogic to manage its cross-region projects as it had to deploy the same project in different regions.
To improve the management efficiency of its cloud infrastructure, the PressLogic team realized that it needed to migrate its products to a cloud platform that supports more time and cost-effective operations. To that end, the company in 2018 decided to move all its services to Google Cloud for its abundant serverless technologies and project-based infrastructure.
Chow explains, "We only had a few engineers to manage the cloud infrastructure of our services, so we needed a more powerful public cloud platform that enables us to offer quality services with minimal operations resources. Google Cloud provides the tools that meet our business needs the most."
Enhancing website performance while reducing operational costs
Following the migration guidelines provided by the Google Cloud team, PressLogic successfully moved all its VMs and databases to Google Cloud in two weeks without any downtime. Now, the startup runs its media content websites with the fully managed clusters on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). For minor projects like its internal content management system and internal web portals, it uses App Engine, Cloud Functions and Cloud Run as infrastructure to further simplify the deployment process and operations.
The serverless technologies of GKE, App Engine, Cloud Functions and Cloud Run support automatic scaling and pay-for-use billing models, which means that compared with using VMs, PressLogic is able to manage its services with less resources and eliminate unnecessary infrastructure costs. As a result, the startup has reduced its operational costs by 30% and freed up more resources for product development.
The autoscaling feature of GKE has also helped PressLogic enhance the availability of its media content websites by instantly adding computing resources when needed. Before the migration, PressLogic's website users used to encounter slow loading speed when the website traffic was high, as well as occasional downtime under instant traffic surges, because the PressLogic team couldn't scale up its VMs in time. With the automatic scalability supported by GKE, no poor website performance caused by traffic fluctuations has occurred ever since.
"Along with other Google Cloud tools, the serverless infrastructure of Google Kubernetes Engine has enabled us to offer a higher service availability while keeping our operations cost low," notes Chow. "Now, we can not only guarantee excellent user experience despite traffic fluctuations, but have more resources to develop new features."
Enabling lower latency all over the world with Cloud Load Balancing
Another major benefit that Google Cloud has brought to PressLogic is the capability to manage its services and network at the global level. Due to the structure of the previous cloud platform that only offered region-based infrastructure, the startup had to deploy the same service in different regions, which made it challenging to manage or control the resources of each service. With the project-based infrastructure provided by Google Cloud, PressLogic can manage its cross-region projects more easily and enhance operational efficiency.
The global load balancing mechanism of Cloud Load Balancing has also helped improve PressLogic's service quality. Before, PressLogic app users around the world needed to request access from the servers deployed in Hong Kong, which led to high latency for users who were located far away from Hong Kong. Since Cloud Load Balancing can direct network traffic to the nearest server worldwide through simple settings, this has reduced the latency period to a very low level.
"We operate our services in several different countries, so being able to manage resources and network traffic across countries is crucial for our business," says Chow. "Google Cloud has greatly increased our capability to provide quality service worldwide with its project-based infrastructure and global network."
"Along with other Google Cloud tools, the serverless infrastructure of Google Kubernetes Engine has enabled us to offer a higher service availability while keeping our operations cost low. Now, we can not only guarantee excellent user experience despite traffic fluctuations, but have more resources to develop new features."
—Edward Chow, Founder & CTO, PressLogicSupporting more efficient data analytics for deeper insights
PressLogic relies on data analytics to provide enterprise customers with insights into the latest social media trends, such as the most popular social media accounts and the most searched keywords. The startup leverages Pub/Sub to transfer data aggregated from social media platforms to BigQuery for data cleaning and analyses. Chow says that compared to other database tools, data query and report generation require less time in BigQuery.
"We’ve tried different database products and found that a query that normally takes two minutes in other tools can be completed in 10 seconds in BigQuery," he explains. "With BigQuery, our customers can retrieve data analytics reports way more efficiently on our platform, which enables them to make business decisions more timely."
"The high-performance, cost-effective infrastructure and data analytics tools of Google Cloud have helped us increase the availability and quality of our services in the most effortless way. Now, we're equipped with all the capabilities to stay on the cutting edge of online media trends and are ready for further expansion."
—Edward Chow, Founder & CTO, PressLogicExpanding business globally at ease
As a part of its next business plan, PressLogic has plans to bring its media expertise to the wider global markets. Chow says that the global network of Google Cloud will significantly facilitate the startup's market expansion process, as it can easily start providing quality services in a new region without configuring cross-region load balancing by itself.
"The high-performance, cost-effective infrastructure and data analytics tools of Google Cloud have helped us increase the availability and quality of our services in the most effortless way. Now, we're equipped with all the capabilities to stay on the cutting edge of online media trends and are ready for further expansion," he adds.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About PressLogic
Founded in 2016, PressLogic is a media commerce company based in Hong Kong specializing in digital content creation and social media marketing. Besides distributing creative online content for brands across more than 10 of its websites, apps and social media accounts, the startup also provides data-driven insights on social media trends through MediaLens, its self-developed analytics system. Its media channels currently have more than 100 million monthly content impressions in total.
About Microfusion
Microfusion was established in 2007 and is the Service Partner of Google Cloud. Microfusion has focused on providing one-stop solutions and consulting – Assessment, Planning, Implementation, and Management to help customers embark on their cloud and digital journeys.
As of today, Microfusion has worked with more than 2,000 customers from public and private sectors including government, high-tech, gaming, media, finance, manufacturers, retailers, e-commerce, medical, and educational institutions to expand their businesses to the world.