Tap “place bet” on a phone in Pennsylvania and a regulatory clock starts: “That wager has to be recorded in that state and cannot leave that state,” explains Edward O’Connor, CTO of Continent 8. This constraint shapes much of how the managed services firm builds infrastructure for some of the online gambling world’s biggest clients, like DraftKings, BetMGM and bet365 – which generated a combined $14 billion+ last year.
Speaking at a recent press roundtable in London, O’Connor set out how regulation, hybrid application design, private networking and a cautious approach to AI running on-prem fit together inside one of the online gambling industry’s largest providers – and one of the biggest “roll your own” infrastructure shops out there. (Continent 8 operates 105 data centres and has over 1,200 global peering relationships across a massive private network.)
