Deployment processes have been streamlined, reducing deployment times from hours to minutes
Revenue growth has been bolstered by advanced analytics, enabling a 318% increase in subscriptions across digital platforms
Operational efficiency as well as resilience of IT systems have significantly improved
Customer engagement has surged with personalized content delivery for better customer satisfaction
Moving to Google Cloud enabled DER SPIEGEL to monetize its new range of product offerings quickly and easily.
Moving to Google Cloud enabled DER SPIEGEL to monetize its new range of product offerings quickly and easily.
DER SPIEGEL: Building new revenue streams with Google Cloud
Being on premise was challenging, because with a lot of new products, there's always a gap between provisioning hardware and developing the product. In Google Cloud, we can deploy through Infrastructure as Code in seconds, and we have a new provisioned infrastructure where we can develop a product.
Miroslav Najda
Head of IT Operations and DevOps
For Germans, DER SPIEGEL isn't just a news outlet, it's an institution that shaped the journalistic landscape of the post-war period. Miroslav Najda, Head of IT Operations and DevOps for the renowned publisher, grew up reading DER SPIEGEL magazine from the age of 14. "My dad was always buying the magazine, and I read it after him," he says. "I was always interested in the news."
DER SPIEGEL's parent company, Spiegel Verlag, was launched in 1947. It is now home to more than a dozen media titles, with annual sales of €246 million. Since joining DER SPIEGEL's IT department in 2008, Najda has seen it undergo an impressive technological evolution. Having been the first publisher of a news magazine in the world to go digital, in 1994, DER SPIEGEL has led the way in new formats, launching an e-paper in 2004, podcasts in 2006, and apps in 2010.
By 2015, DER SPIEGEL had been on-premise for nearly 26 years. Driven by a rapidly changing business model that was repositioning the organization as a product-led company, it decided the time was ripe to move its infrastructure to the cloud.
"Being on premise was challenging because with a lot of new products, there's always a gap between provisioning hardware and developing the product," says Najda. "In the cloud, we can deploy through Infrastructure as Code in seconds, and we have a new provisioned infrastructure where we can develop a product."
Reliability is at the heart of relocation
DER SPIEGEL considered a number of potential cloud providers before landing on Google Cloud, impressed with its flexibility, speed, and – most importantly for Najda – reliability. "The provision had to be so reliable that we didn't have to always fix things," he says. "We want to avoid getting a call to say, 'the platform is down,' and this hasn't happened in the years that we've been working with Google Cloud. That's why we're very happy with Google Cloud and our experience."
The company with its subsidiary SPIEGEL Techlab began its journey in the cloud in 2016, with Bento, a former magazine for young people. Based on the success of that rollout, "we could see we were going in the right direction," says Najda.
Kubernetes gives us the reliability for all the services that we need, so we have an infrastructure which heals itself with the right health checks.
Miroslav Najda
Head of IT Operations and DevOps
Once DER SPIEGEL had made that decision, it started migrating the content, building new user journeys with great new UI and UX, building new partner integrations and many other things. The Go-Live itself was swift. Since the platform it wanted was built and tested in the background, it was simply a matter of a DNS change and then making that platform visible to the public.
Google Kubernetes Engine underpins the main parts of DER SPIEGEL's new infrastructure, including its content management system, back office, application server, and digital archive. It offers DER SPIEGEL a secure provisioning platform that means it doesn't have to focus on the multiple solutions around it. "Google Kubernetes Engine gives us the reliability for all the services that we need," says Najda, "so we have an infrastructure which heals itself with the right health checks."
DER SPIEGEL also relies on other key Google Cloud tools: Cloud Load Balancing enables them to have managed certificates, and to effectively use and control the connections between its services and the outside world. In addition, "We're using Cloud SQL with its great features," Najda notes. "We like investigating with "Query insights," so we can tweak the performance and see where the performance is going down or up. That's a great tool, and it's very helpful for us."
Continuing the innovation journey with Google Cloud and happtiq
DER SPIEGEL's migration to Google Cloud has contributed to its shift toward a digital-first strategy, resulting in a significant increase in digital revenue, data performance, and speed of access to actionable insights. "It's the whole architecture itself and the whole combination of tools," says Najda. "It starts with a good workflow, where we provision the architecture in code, and then CICD goes to a component like a container, or provisioning the cloud for us. The whole setup is actually a big change that improved everything in an impressive way."
"We always try to find possibilities to develop new products and new services for our customers," says Najda. "Google Cloud is reliable, secure, and flexible, which are the most important things for us. It was, and still, is a great experience working with them."
We always try to find possibilities to develop new products and new services for our customers. Google Cloud is reliable, secure, and flexible, which are the most important things for us. It was, and still is, a great experience working with them.
Miroslav Najda
Head of IT Operations and DevOps
DER SPIEGEL has been synonymous with investigative journalism and an authority in the German media landscape for over 75 years. Its 500 person-strong editorial team uncovers the unknown, provides context in a complex world and sets the news agenda as well as the tone for public debates. DER SPIEGEL reaches over 12 million people each week.
Industry: Media & Entertainment
Location: Germany
Products: Google Cloud, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Firestore, Google Kubernetes Engine
About Google Cloud partner- happtiq
happtiq, a Vienna-based Google Cloud Partner, empowers businesses across the DACH region with tailored cloud solutions. A team of certified Google Cloud experts acts as a trusted advisor, crafting bespoke solutions that drive real business outcomes.
