Bet365 creates new DevOPs team to support platform development

Bet365 has announce plans to form a new 70-person DevOps team in its Manchester and Stoke offices to help support the operator’s platform and new product development.

The new team will bring together staff from several departments, including Software Release, IT Operations, Problem and Incident Management and Service Delivery.

“As the scale and scope of our business has increased, so the underlying technologies and platform that support it have become more complex,” Steven Briggs, the newly-appointed head of the DevOps team, told Computer Weekly.

“The critical question is how to keep pace with the consistent need to release software, while ensuring the platform remains stable and secure?

“Modernising our approach to operational and release activity is imperative and we believe a DevOps approach can help with this.”

Bet365 said a key focus would be on more automation around various processes, and enhanced deployment pipelines.

Briggs added: “We want to give operations the tooling, dashboards and automation needed to increase the value it offers the business. This will involve breaking out of the team and technology silos that can otherwise hinder how the end-to-end system is understood and managed,” said Briggs.

Bet365 has long prided itself on developing its technology in-house, with the firm’s recent sports innovations including partial cash-out and a proprietary bet-builder product.

Earlier this year the operator developed a new Kubernetese cluster which it claimed marked a new phase in the development of its sports betting platform.