Managing 109,000 Registrants and 23,000 Arrivals Using AWS with Bornan Sports Technology

Bornan was founded in 2017 with the vision of building event management systems for sports events using scalable cloud technology. GMS, built in the cloud using AWS, provides all the backend management that local organizing committees (LOCs) need to run complex multisport events. GMS currently comes with a range of customizable modules for managing areas such as registrations and accreditations, access control, entry qualifications, arrivals and departures, VIPs, catering, uniforms, volunteers and workforce, accommodation, and more.

As Bornan has expanded GMS beyond its original two modules, it has implemented more AWS services in response to its needs for additional scalability and security. “We chose AWS for the reliability, scalability, cost management, and number of regions that it offers,” says Jose Manuel Dominguez, chief digital and innovation officer at Bornan. “GMS is a critical element in delivering an event, so we cannot be down for longer than minutes or it is a complete disaster. In 8 years of using AWS, we’ve had virtually no downtime or disruption for clients.”

Backed by the scalability of AWS, Bornan successfully delivered GMS to manage the 2023 Pan and Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile. The event involved over 7,000 athletes, 20 countries, 41 committees, 58 sports, and over 100 sessions in 21 days. For the 2023 Pan American Games, GMS managed over 109,000 registrations, 74,000 accreditations, 23,000 arrivals and departures, 375,000 access control readings, and 35,000 volunteer registrations. The 2023 Parapan American Games added an additional 35,000 registrations, 32,000 accreditations, 6,000 arrivals and departures, and 102,000 access control readings.

To serve geographically disbursed users for this event, Bornan used Amazon CloudFront, a service for securely delivering content with low latency and high transfer speeds. “Using Amazon CloudFront distribution, we could deliver our service with high availability to people from all over the world,” says Marcos Millán, CTO of Bornan. Bornan also makes the most of AWS Regions to provide services at events around the world. For example, for an event hosted in the Middle East, Bornan ran GMS in a geographically proximate AWS Region to satisfy the LOC’s data compliance requirements.

Bornan uses AWS services to boost the security of its solutions and comply with data protection regulations. GMS handles personal information, including medical data for athletes and accreditation information that governments use to deliver visas. Bornan follows AWS best practices and implemented security features in Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53, a reliable and cost-effective way to route end users to internet applications. It also uses AWS WAF, which protects web applications from common exploits. “AWS provides state-of-the-art security in the cloud, and we get the most out of it,” says Millán. “Amazon Route 53 in particular is an incredible service that provides 100 percent of its service-level agreements.”

To handle scale, Bornan uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Auto Scaling—a service for adding or removing compute capacity—to raise new instances when demand is high and end them when demand is low. The system can launch new instances in 35–50 seconds, which gives the company the flexibility to optimize costs by only paying for the resources it uses. Bornan also saves an additional 50–70 percent of compute costs using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, which let users take advantage of unused Amazon EC2 capacity in the AWS Cloud.

“Having the ability to deploy our systems quickly using AWS means that we can reach some clients and projects that would otherwise be impossible,” says Dominguez. Internally, Bornan improves efficiency by reviewing code using Amazon Q Developer, the most capable generative AI–powered assistant for software development. “The less time we spend on technology, the more time we can spend with our clients, complementing the skills or knowledge that the LOCs might need,” says Dominguez. That furthers Bornan’s goal of not only delivering excellent events but also strengthening local organizations.

Following its success at Santiago 2023, Bornan will be supporting the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. This event is set to be one of the largest multisport events in the world, with more sports and athletes than the Paris 2024 Olympics.

GMS is constantly evolving, as Bornan customizes the functionality for each event based on customer feedback. For example, the company is using AI to enhance and streamline key operational workflows. By integrating AI capabilities into its systems, Bornan can automate critical decision-making tasks, reducing manual effort and processing time. That approach significantly accelerates complex processes like accreditation, especially in scenarios involving hundreds of thousands of participants.

“We’re always aiming to go to the next level on our products, but the fact is that in only 8 years, Bornan has been able to close deals with a list of major organizations, and we are going to be managing the largest multisport event in history with the 2026 Asian Games. I think that that speaks for itself on the quality of our event delivery using AWS,” says Dominguez.