A cloud deployment of EidosMedia's Méthode portal server web CMS has reduced costs while enhancing performance and reliability.

Brazilian publisher Grpcom - the largest publisher in the dynamic Paraná region - had found traffic peaks and unreliable power and internet delivery compromised delivery to online readers. Visitor traffic at the news sites during elections and important sport events could be ten times the normal level.

Moving the CMS - installed last year to unify production of print and digital versions of its dailies - to an Amazon-based cloud service delivered real-time scalability and greater network and power continuity. Additional server capacity can be brought on line quickly in response to traffic surges - and then scaled back as soon as it is no longer needed, bringing significant cost savings. Admin staff can monitor the process using a browser-based console and, if necessary, intervene manually to add or subtract resources from the deployment.

The cloud deployment also provides an automatic 'disaster recovery' service, avoiding the need to create a separate backup facility.

A year down the track, statistics show 100 per cent resource availability over 365 days. The cloud-based deployment also required less administrative support than the localised solution it replaced. Reduction in investment on localised servers has also brought overall cost savings of around 20 per cent.

Automatic allocation of server space during peak periods has led to faster delivery of content to visitors and a significantly improved reader experience.

Following placing the Web CMS in the cloud, the publisher is to move the entire editorial operation into a cloud-based deployment, and the solution developed with AWS provides a model for future cloud-based projects.