Zeba Consulting, a business and technology consulting firm, specializes in securing, storing, managing, and analyzing its customers’ data. Data is core to Zeba’s client portfolio – some need cost effective ways to archive sensitive data in a way consistent with regulatory requirements, others need to perform processor intensive analytics, and others still have businesses with high seasonal variability. For all of these purposes Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) helps them deliver scalable, cost-effective solutions. Zeba worked closely with Spot-On.com to deliver results with AWS.
Spot-On.com is new kind of online political consultancy using a unique database and analytics to narrowly target voters online. Traditional tools used by media buyers do not work well for political advertising since political constituencies have little in common with traditional forms of demographic targeting. Using a database of relevant outlets and proprietary Pinpoint Persuasion® analytical algorithms Spot-On is able to target advertising with a precision not previously available. Spot-On also archives advertising campaign data to compare results from different approach. Spot-On combines a requirement for deep analytics, data storage, and variable demand (depending on campaign cycle).
Looking for an economical solution, Zeba used Amazon Web Services and open source software to produce the site’s back-end infrastructure from a single Amazon
EC2 image. With this, they quickly created and launched a new database, application server, caching server, and load balancer instances.
The Spot-On platform was up and running within a couple of weeks and will be used extensively through the fall campaign season. Using AWS, Spot-On eliminated the infrastructure capital costs associated with its application.
John Painter, Director of Technology at Zeba explains, “In a traditional, non-AWS setup, Spot-On would have had to commit to spending a large sum of money on capacity which would be fully used only a few months of year. Also, there would be a greater likelihood of the application failing during major spikes in demand. AWS enabled us to adjust to the fluctuating demand without investing in hardware. When our monitoring software pages to notify us of increases in load, we are able to spin up a few more instances within minutes.”
Chris Nolan, CEO of Spot-On, states, “AWS is a boon to startups looking to reliably scale their systems to market demand without vast upfront investments in technology. Also it helps us seamlessly address spikes in demand which are common in our business.”
This is just one example that makes Zeba believers in Amazon Web Services. Zeba continues to look for ways they can use AWS’ infrastructure services for their clients and themselves. “We chose Amazon Web Services because it allows us to rapidly deliver cost effective, reliable and scalable infrastructure solutions to our clients.”
For more information on Zeba Consulting, visit http://www.zeba-consulting.com/ 
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