For organizations managing live event logistics at global scale, stability and speed aren’t just goals — they’re expectations. But when those goals are constrained by a 40-year-old codebase, even routine upgrades can create ripple effects across millions of users.
We partnered with a global entertainment company to help bridge their legacy systems into a modern era — without interrupting the live events their customers rely on. Our work spanned from edge security and system observability to infrastructure as code and cloud migration.
From Spaghetti Perl to Predictable Rust
One core initiative involved decoupling and rewriting thousands of lines of undocumented Pascal code — some of which had been running uninterrupted for decades. Working alongside client partners, we replicated a key database, transforming brittle logic into maintainable, observable services written in Java and Rust.
The rewrite wasn’t just cleaner — it was lighter. Load was offloaded from the core systems, resulting in improved performance and maintainability with no end-user disruption.
Making Abuse Prevention Invisible (In the Best Way)
Bots are an existential threat in the online world. We embedded with the abuse prevention team to help overhaul their architecture and mitigate malicious traffic — without punishing real users.
At peak moments, this meant monitoring and analysising 50,000 requests per second. We modernized the bot detection systems by designing a real-time rule engine that integrates with third-party services like Recaptcha, Distil, and Perimeter X.
We also hardened request validation rules and deployed code to the edge via WebAssembly on Fastly for ultra-low latency decision-making. The system blocks 10% of inbound traffic instantly — yet remains flexible and forgiving enough to avoid false positives.
Moving Infrastructure from On-Prem to On-Point
We migrated several services from legacy on-prem datacenters to Kubernetes clusters running in AWS. Terraform and Helm were used to codify infrastructure, making deployments repeatable, auditable, and secure.
The result: better scalability, lower operational overhead, and improved resiliency. Teams could iterate faster, with more confidence, and less risk.
Security That’s Built In, Not Bolted On
We worked with data science client teams to secure high-risk workloads and protect personally identifiable information (PII). Databricks was used to orchestrate data science pipelines for fraud detection, and we implemented access control at the catalog level using infrastructure-as-code.
These controls were both technical and procedural, ensuring sensitive data could only be accessed by authorized users — without slowing down investigation or response workflows.
Continuous Delivery, Continuous Confidence
A new feature — allowing customers to upgrade their purchases mid-event — required cross-cutting changes across multiple services. We helped adapt the existing codebase, extend test coverage, and refactor safely, getting the feature into production just in time for a major arena debut.
High trust, low drama. Just how it should be.
Bottom Line
We helped a long-standing leader in entertainment evolve their systems with modern architecture, better observability, and improved security — without losing sight of what matters most: keeping real fans in the seats.
