LingoAce Innovates Online Language Learning for Children on AWS-Powered Platforms

With its leading online Mandarin Chinese and English language learning platforms, LingoAce is committed to making learning more engaging and effective for children. To respond growing demand, the company aims to scale its products and services to reach a wider global audience faster. This requires a platform that can provide a seamless user experience while meeting the compliance requirements of different regions. Also, the infrastructure must be agile and flexible enough to support new product and feature launches without disrupting business operations and customer services. 

To that end, LingoAce migrated its core service—live online classes—from a third-party SaaS to its own proprietary virtual classroom. It also built a supporting operations platform to provide its own data analysis to deliver a more efficient online business.

LingoAce has used AWS since 2018 for its internal operation management and website hosting. Now its core services—the online live classes, the operation analysis platform, and customer service system—run on AWS as well.

Xiao He, Director of Operations and Maintenance, LingoAce, shared that AWS’s service and technical support have been top notch. “Not only is the AWS team readily available to support our global team, their capabilities have been excellent. The AWS team assisted LingoAce on several projects, such as the optimization of our databases, content delivery network (CDN) anti-leech processing, and data analysis platform,” said He.

AWS’s global presence lets LingoAce migrate its technology stacks seamlessly to new regions quickly and smoothly, and focus on business innovation without having to worry about underlying infrastructure.

Also, AWS’s security and compliance services helps LingoAce meet regulatory requirements globally. Specifically, AWS storage and database services support static and dynamic encryption of data, and the full lifecycle management of audit logs, which helps ensure data and application security and compliance at the infrastructure level. LingoAce is also able to review the overall compliance status of its infrastructures to promptly identify and close loopholes.

LingoAce leverages Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Redshift, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Database Migration Service (Amazon DMS), Amazon EMR, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), Amazon WAF, Amazon Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Direct Connect, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Connect, and Amazon Elemental MediaConvert.

LingoAce architecture on AWS

With the AWS Well-Architected Tool, LingoAce has improved the functionality of its application platform, adapting AWS system deployment best practices. The AWS team has also helped LingoAce build its operation analysis platform from scratch, developing goal setting to analysis, Proof of Concept (PoC), and service launch. LingoAce could now deliver its core online services with better availability and easier operations and maintenance. Running storage and database services across multi-availability zones (AZ) lets LingoAce achieve its business goals better than with its traditional self-built platform.

The company has improved its cost efficiency and speed to market. For example, by using Amazon EMR and Amazon MSK, LingoAce has transformed its SQL analysis from a traditional database to a task flow. Amazon Redshift, ensuring timed access to BI reports every day, has boosted the overall efficiency of the operation analysis platform by 30-40 percent. Amazon Connect has also helped raised student attendance rate by 60 percent compared with manually calling the user as a class reminder, generating tangible business income. Adopting Amazon Elemental MediaConvert, a video transcoding service, LingoAce has quickly developed video-on-demand (VOD) content for broadcast and multi-screen delivery without needing to build or operate video processing infrastructures, saving time.

Amazon WAF, Amazon GuardDuty, and other security services have helped the LingoAce team identify potential security risks and resolve possible compliance issues through better processes. The AWS compliance check tool can generate security inspection rules based on different compliance regulations, making it possible for LingoAce to review its infrastructures and processes to meet global compliance requirements. Amazon CloudFront, supporting CDN anti-leech processing, has given LingoAce added assurance for application security and compliance.

LingoAce plans to advance its cloud-native initiative. It will employ serverless technologies to optimize and upgrade stacks, further enhance resource matching, and promote R&D efficiency. It will also use AWS services for its machine learning and AI application scenarios, such as AI-facilitated learning assessment and innovative class experience.

LingoAce is a global education technology company headquartered in Singapore. It launnched its leading Mandarin Chinese language learning platform in 2017, unlocking a world of possibilities for young learners through technology. What makes LingoAce effective is their seamless blend of live instruction with a professional teacher with gamified coursework and research-backed curriculum aligned to global standards. Learning a language becomes fun, engaging, and effective. LingoAce has operations in the United States, Southeast Asia and China. In 2021, it received 160 million US dollars in series B and C funding. Today, LingoAce has delivered more than 7 million classes, connecting learners in 100+ countries and regions to their roster of 4,000+ professional teachers.