This is a guest contribution by Greg Behr. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.
Like so many other activities, gambling is increasingly moving from land based e.g. local casinos and betting shops, into the digital world such as apps and websites. Online gambling or iGaming, as it’s known, opens up a whole new world as users can be located anywhere in the world. In a growing number of jurisdictions, regulations are at last catching up. As a result, online gambling is 
progressively changing from an unregulated or in some countries even illegal activity, into a fully regulated form of entertainment driving the necessity for affordable, scalable, fast and secure infrastructures.
As an example, the Dutch Senate recently passed the Remote Gaming Bill, paving the way for the roll-out of iGaming regulation in the Netherlands from mid 2020. iGaming is booming in regulated markets such as the U.K. and Malta – and countries such as Sweden are rising stars in this evolving industry. These new regulations have opened up cloud hosting companies to work with iGaming providers. This means that cloud hosting providers, that have successfully embraced this newly regulated market have opened up a new customer base to act as the infrastructure provider for these new licensed operators in their regulated products markets, that’s not just limited to the Netherlands, but many countries around the world.
How can cloud hosting companies help?
The growing number of countries in which online gambling is now a fully regulated activity means that the global iGaming industry is becoming less dependent on a limited number of offshore jurisdictions where online gambling operations traditionally congregate. Having online platforms at their fingertips, users could be on their laptop, tablet or phone, as long as the iGaming operators network has the flexibility, the power and bandwidth to deal with it. The iGaming industry can profit from using a range of global hosting services, such as colocation, dedicated servers, cloud, storage, security products and multi CDN to help support their wide network.
Scalability
In order for iGaming operators to become accessible to not just hundreds, but thousands, even millions of players – scalability is key. Using cloud hosting, iGaming operators will be able to share their data in various data centres across the world, depending on where their players are located, and the scalability aspect of the cloud, will enable them to scale up or down depending on how many players are using the network at that one time.
Latency
The last thing any user wants to see, with tensions at a high, is their online bet buffering or pausing whilst they’re at a crucial point of a game, having just placed a bet on their favourite jockey or gone ‘all in’ on their round of blackjack. When choosing a suitable cloud hosting service, iGaming operators need to ensure they gain a network that has the ability to deliver huge bandwidth capacity, fast speed and excellent connectivity for their customers worldwide, that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg in order to gain that performance. Location of data centres is also crucial, as choosing hosting service providers who have data centres located in close proximity to the world’s largest internet exchange points, will reduce latency, thereby giving the players a smoother experience.
Cost
Hosting their iGaming operator data on servers in data centres can be costly depending on the country its located in. Having the ability to locate it anywhere in the world or continent is a way of reducing costs. At the same time, iGaming operators need to adhere to local regulations, for example, the Netherlands Gambling Authority has decreed that future licensed iGaming operators who want to operate in the country will need to maintain a control database that is physically located on Dutch soil. Even though, cost of servers will be a high priority, ensuring they are choosing cloud hosting providers that have servers in multiple countries, including the Netherlands, would be a top priority.
Security and certification
When considering cloud hosting options and providers, scalability, latency and cost isn’t just where it stops. Although handling large amounts of iGaming operator data is thought of, much of it will also contain sensitive financial and bank data, so security and dealing with threats will also be a top priority for the industry. As such, the iGaming industry also has stringent standards set for these hosting service providers, so when looking at cloud hosting partners, ensuring they adhere to standards such as ISO 27001, SOC type 1 and PCI DSS.
Taking into consideration the new Dutch regulations on the Remote Gaming Bill, this will further change up the industry as more storage and cloud providers will be happier to support licensed iGaming operators in this recently regulated market. In turn, the scalability, latency, cost and flexible benefits of the cloud, will allow the iGaming industry to move further afield to more countries and markets.
About the author:
Greg Behr is the Manager Business Development iGaming of Leaseweb.
