Kinepolis Success Ride
Success fit for a global purpose
Kinepolis is a brand we all recognize instantly, being a household name in the best movie experiences, as well as a world-class set of professionals, fun to work with. We acted – and are still acting – as their go-to team in bringing Akamaiʼs best security and performance solutions to the table. We have some impressive results to show for it. High time we shared them with you.
Kinepolis – a story of all-Belgian entrepreneurship
But first, the Kinepolis story is nothing short of massive. Starting out in the 1960ʼs in Harelbeke, Belgium with just a single cinema, has now evolved into 111 multiplexes, a workforce of 4000 people and around 41 million visitors per year. All the time, Kinepolis never strayed from their path: providing that one-of-a-kind movie experience for anyone to enjoy. As Kinepolis evolved to become a global player, global performance & security challenges werenʼt far behind.
A partnership built to last
The Kinepolis customer journey begins online. Providing a seamless experience for site visitors, all while having top-notch security in place, are key features for anyone with sights set on ambitious goals. With recent acquisitions of cinema complexes in the United States and Canada, the time had come to ensure global digital success.
“Akamai and Evolane talked the talk – and walked the walk – almost immediately.” – Bjorn Van Reet, CIO Kinepolis
Kinepolis CIO Bjorn Van Reet elaborates. ʻWeʼre at the starting point of expanding across the Atlantic. That means our IT infrastructure needs to be ready to handle extra traffic and requests, as well as tight security. A smooth, secure website experience shouldnʼt be just for those in the vicinity of Brussels, where our data center is located, but for the entire world. We needed IT partners to join us on a global journey. Akamai and Evolane talked the talk — and walked the walk — almost immediately.ʼ
Big tools for the big screen
The mutual story told by Evolane and Akamai caught on. No test scripts were written, the immediate results of environmental testing using Akamaiʼs technology spoke for themselves. ʻWe were just amazed by the initial results of the tests done in the environment. It proved to us that the alliance between Akamai technology and Evolane expertise would work for Kinepolisʼ, says Bjorn Van Reet.
With that perfect POC under our belts, we began work on following it up with the real deal: optimizing the best tools Akamai had to offer to tighten overall website security and increase its performance. Akamaiʼs Content delivery network, with the addition of the Application Load Balancer, was brought in to relieve the pressure of high traffic on the Kinepolis datacenter and bring a much-needed boost in the direction of that browsing experience Kinepolis visitors deserve. EdgeDNS served as our DNS of choice for a project this size and Kona Site Defender as our answer to the security challenges a global project like this one was sure to face.
“Evolane has become part of the Kinepolis family, we share a common culture of quality and speak the same language.”
– Bjorn Van Reet, CIO Kinepolis
A brotherhood dedicated to the end user
Throughout this – still ongoing — project, the axis of Evolane, Akamai and Kinepolis showed how like-minded individuals can effectively work as a single team. ʻWe loved Evolaneʼs no-nonsense attitude from day oneʼ, says Bjorn. ʻThey are entrepreneurs, not only thinking along with us in our needs and wants – but coming up with ideas to exceed them. They know what theyʼre talking about and happily hand out expertise. Theyʼre customer-focused in a way that felt refreshing, comfortable and familiar from the start.ʼ
The stats you’ve been waiting for
The results of our hard work were met with the same enthusiasm. Not only didwe achieve the desired results using Akamaiʼs technology, we managed to get them in the form of impressive stats.
“I’m already curious about the future. Whatever that is, Evolane and Akamai are undoubtedly part of it.”
Looking forward to it, Bjorn!
ʻAt Kinepolis, weʼre professionals, but we are also just people. Evolaneʼs efforts in being that flexible, reliable and humane partner made a huge difference. Just like us, end user experience has been key to them from the start. They speak our language and share in our culture. In fact, weʼve grown to consider them part of the Kinepolis family. I canʼt imagine a bigger compliment to give to this teamʼ, Bjorn concludes.
- Thanks to the use of Akamaiʼs own CDN, site loading speed was brought down from 8.5 seconds to 3.7 seconds. Thatʼs a preliminary result, meaning further decrease is just a matter of time.
- Nowadays, nearly 90% of website traffic is cached by Akamai, greatly relieving the Kinepolis data center, as well as its provider, especially during peak hours.
- A single EdgeDNS, 574 million DNS hits handled every month, without a
- Robust security and DDoS protection in place, for a website experience thatʼs not only lightning fast but also very much secure. Itʼs – literally – safe to say that.
- Geoblocking to limit access to visitors who benefit from purchasing a cinema ticket, in order to optimize overall security..
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