Ents24 Case Study

Background

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Ents24 brings together live entertainment listings from across the UK into a single, easy-to-use platform. Each month, the service adds over 14,000 new shows, introduces hundreds of new artists and helps more than a million fans discover live events across the UK.

 

Reliability and availability are critical to the business. Users expect accurate information, fast performance, and uninterrupted access, particularly during peak traffic periods. For over more than 20 years, Ents24 has built a strong reputation for delivering a fan-focused experience and is rated “Excellent” on Trustpilot with over 13,000 reviews.

 

As the platform and its audience grew, Ents24 needed an IT setup that could scale smoothly without becoming costly or difficult to manage.

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The Challenge

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As Ents24 continued to grow, its IT requirements became broader and more demanding while remaining supported by a small internal IT team. Day-to-day operations were well managed in-house, but the platform’s scale and criticality meant there were limits to how much could realistically be handled internally.

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Several challenges began to emerge:

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• Depth of expertise: Certain infrastructure and hosting decisions required specialist or senior-level knowledge that isn’t always practical to retain within a small internal team.
   

• Capacity and continuity: With a compact IT function, maintaining consistent cover during periods such as annual leave or sickness could be difficult, particularly if issues arose out of hours.
   

• Legacy on-premises infrastructure had become increasingly expensive and complex to maintain, while lacking the flexibility required to support ongoing growth.
   

• Scaling the platform meant investing in hardware and managing additional complexity ahead of demand, rather than scaling in line with actual usage.
   

Ents24 needed an approach that would allow them to scale on demand, improve resilience, and ensure reliable support was always available, without increasing internal headcount or operational overhead.

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The Solution

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Migration to AWS Cloud Hosting

Owtanet worked closely with Ents24 to migrate their infrastructure from an on-premises data centre to AWS. The transition was carefully planned and executed to minimise disruption while improving scalability, resilience, and cost efficiency.

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By moving to an on-demand cloud environment, Ents24 gained the ability to scale resources in line with traffic and business growth, rather than maintaining excess capacity year-round. This delivered immediate cost savings while also futureproofing the platform.

 

Ongoing IT Consultancy and Senior Level Support 

Beyond hosting, Owtanet provides ongoing IT consultancy to provide practical technical support and guidance as required, particularly around infrastructure reliability, platform resilience, and operational continuity.

 

Rather than needing to employ a large internal IT team, Ents24 can use our senior-level experience as and when it’s needed, keeping costs lower while maintaining access to specialist knowledge.

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Secondary On‑Call Support

Owtanet provides secondary on‑call cover for Ents24. This ensures continuity of support during periods when internal IT staff are unavailable, such as annual leave or sickness.

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If a critical issue arises, our team can step in quickly to diagnose and resolve problems, giving Ents24 peace of mind that support is always available when it matters most.

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