Case Study: NU.nl achieves real-time, low-latency multimedia timelines with Google Cloud Platform (Firebase)

NU.nl Ready-made multimedia timelines with FirebaseReady-made multimedia timelines with Firebase

NU.nl, part of the Nordic Sanoma Corporation and the Netherlands’ most viewed news site, needed to launch a realtime sports app (NUsport) with multimedia timelines for Champions League coverage — and had only eight weeks to deliver. Their previous timeline tool only supported short text and building a custom backend would take too long, so the team sought a reliable, low-cost SaaS solution that could scale for high, fluctuating traffic.

They chose Firebase and used its ready-made backend to prototype and deploy quickly, with the CMS writing directly to a flattened Firebase database that feeds simultaneous tournament and match timelines. The result: fast, low-cost pay-as-you-go infrastructure with no downtime, support for text, images, video, polls and in-app ads, and enough reliability and scalability to roll the solution out to NU.nl’s main site.

NU.nl

Kristiaan van Drie

IT Manager