“Our vision for the print and digital editions is they should complement one another,” says Emanuel. “Digital channels are a great way to create greater impact and grow our audience by, for example, including video content on our sports channel. Our digital strategy goes hand-in-hand with our print publications, as connecting readers with the right content for them is how we stay ahead.”

As Jerusalem Post Group looks after three fast-paced news channels, it experiences peaks in traffic around the clock, and needs to stay agile to be first to publish when events hit the news. Its previous infrastructure with a local hosting provider was inflexible, leading to inefficient server usage and unacceptable maintenance windows. Migrating to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) enabled it to address those challenges.

“Our previous infrastructure wasn’t aligned with the dynamic nature of the news sector,” says Emanuel. “Getting the right infrastructure is the foundation and the first step to any innovation, so we needed to put that in place in order to be agile and available.”

Migrating from local hosted servers to the cloud

24/7 and rolling news media mean news channels need to try even harder to be first and stay ahead. Any downtime or maintenance windows get in the way of connecting their readers with up-to-date content. “The situation with our local hosted provider was affecting the business,” explains Emanuel. “It was very difficult to access the infrastructure and really understand what we had. We were paying for additional capacity to provide for potential peaks, rather than for what we were actually using.”

With help from Google Cloud Premier Partner WideOps , Jerusalem Post Group migrated its infrastructure to GCP. “We run the Jerusalem Post, Maariv, and Sport1 websites on Compute Engine, and use Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Cloud Load Balancing, and Stackdriver as well as networking and firewall functions,” says Emanuel. “The Jpost, Maariv, and Sport1 mobile apps run on App Engine. We decided to rebuild from scratch where possible, in order to optimize and correct any faults in the previous infrastructure.”

“For two of the websites on Compute Engine, we use autoscaling so they work on minimum servers and scale up when necessary,” says Emanuel. “We only pay for what we use, which is a huge benefit and helps keep costs under control.”

Migrating infrastructure without interrupting the news cycle

Working on an infrastructure project for a fast-paced media business brings its own challenges. “We started working on the architecture in April, and all three websites were live on the new infrastructure by August,” says Meir Daniel, Founder and CEO at WideOps. “The challenge was working around news events, because if something important happened, we would have to stop work.”

“In the end, we were able to complete the migration without any change in service for the readers,” Meir explains. “We took a one-hour maintenance window that lasted between 10 and 15 minutes, during which the website couldn’t be updated but was still up.”

“WideOps played a crucial role in the project, providing support above and beyond what we expected,” says Emanuel. “The working relationship was transparent and professional, and contributed significantly to the project’s success.”

Moving towards an advanced analytics pipeline

Since migrating to GCP, Jerusalem Post Group has seen improvements in performance across its sites and mobile apps. “With servers in both European and North American data centers we’re physically closer to our global readers and benefit from faster response times,” says Emamuel. “We don’t have to schedule such frequent maintenance windows so the service is more stable, and thanks to efficient system usage we also have lower infrastructure costs.”

Now, Jerusalem Post Group is thinking about implementing Cloud CDN, as well as enhanced security features and an advanced data pipeline. “We are keen to think about the possibilities of machine learning and data analysis enabled by GCP,” says Emanuel. “For example, using data insights to personalize the home page according to reader interests, understanding our audience better, and predicting which articles will get the most views.”

“Google Cloud felt like a natural choice, as we were already using Google Ads. Choosing GCP was a way of strengthening our relationship with Google. In the long term, the plan is to grow and gain more and more readers around the world,” he says. “As well as the gains in performance and stability we have already seen, we’re excited to work together on continuing to innovate and grow.”