41 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 Lottery is Ready for Cloud Computing – Is CloudComputing Ready for Lottery? The lottery industry has a history of adopting new technologies once they become sufficiently mature to support lottery’s mission. To discuss whether Cloud is at that stage now, industry consultant and moderator Charles Cohen spoke with IGT executives Rachel Barber, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Lottery & Gaming, and Srini Nedunuri, Vice President iLottery. Rachel Barber: The Lottery industry operates within a procurement framework that’s quite strict, where solution offerings are required to abide by whatever request or restrictions are outlined in an RFP. Historically, requirements for an in-state or local data center would prohibit any move to Cloud. Earlier this year, the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) made an important rule change that allows U.S. member lotteries to embrace Cloud. This is a really important first step. At IGT, our roadmaps are designed around Cloud readiness. We’ve been making investments for some time now to enable our solutions to run in the Cloud. Scalability and time to market are the technical benefits that I see benefitting lotteries and players the most. In our industry, scalability is of course critical. We need to accommodate peak sales volumes during high jackpots, and we’re seeing an expanded player base during COVID due to mobile adoption. This also drives the need for scalability due to the higher amount of traffic that grows throughout the life of these contracts. It’s difficult to predict at the start of 10-year contract how much storage or infrastructure or CPU power the lottery will need over a 10-year time frame. Now, with the scalability that Cloud offers, we can expand quickly and grow with the lottery. Srini Nedunuri: Cloud gives you the simplicity to fuel innovation, so that organizations don’t have to worry about the scale required, or the processing power, or the other points that Rachel touched upon. From a player perspective, it’s important to offer the required services on demand and on time, for example, if players are trying to check their numbers at peak jackpot times when the traffic is quite high. If your service can’t handle that demand, it’s frustrating for players. With a Cloud solution you can easily scale up, and your services are seamless and fluid. That’s certainly one of the biggest advantages: serving players on demand. The player experience is absolutely essential, because there’s an inherent relationship between the lottery brand and player trust. Cloud also allows you to frequently update your game content, your websites, features, and so on. At the same time, the Cloud ecosystem enables you with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and machine-learning tools. And because you have more computing power and processing speed, you can take advantage of that ecosystem and expand it to personalization. We all know how successful Netflix is – that’s all Big Data and AI. That kind of personalization can also guide what you offer or don’t offer to players, supporting Responsible Gaming. To hear the full discussion, visit IGT.com/FutureForward. LOOKING AHEAD The wide-ranging discussion confirmed that the Cloud is more than hype or clever marketing. The technology is now mature and capable of enabling a new lottery player experience that’s more data-driven and more personalized. While the RFP cycle is a key factor, over the next few of years it’s reasonable to expect that more RFPs will reflect lotteries’ interest in adopting Cloud and new related services. For more information on IGT Cloud solutions, contact your IGT Account Manager. Q “Security has always been a critical component for lotteries and for IGT. Cloud providers offer inherent security protections that we can take advantage of, but a move to the Cloud for an IGT solution doesn’t mean that we hand over all security measures to a third party. We are still responsible for the design and security of the systems, and we know that we need to continue to provide the strictest controls around security as we always have.” – Rachel Barber, IGT Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Lottery & Gaming
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