Case Study: BRIT Awards achieves seamless scaling for a 400% traffic surge with Acquia Cloud

BRIT Awards amplifies their Drupal website with Acquia Cloud

The BRIT Awards, the UK’s biggest music awards organized by the British recorded music industry association (BPI), faced recurring, intense traffic spikes around its nominations launch and show night—an issue that crashed the site during the 2011 nominations and exposed the need for a more scalable, cost‑effective hosting solution.

Working with Acquia (and partner Deeson Online), the BRITs moved to Acquia Cloud and Acquia Support, which provided 24/7 Drupal expertise, performance tuning, and rapid scaling (upsizing load balancers and adding 12 servers). The platform handled a 400% year‑over‑year traffic increase in 2012, kept the site stable during peak events, preserved critical functionality like voting, and delivered a smoother experience for fans.

BRIT Awards

Giuseppe de Cristofano

IT Manager