Case Study: HEINEKEN achieves global reach and reliable low-latency campaigns with Microsoft Azure CDN

HEINEKEN Uses the Cloud to Reach 10.5 Million Consumers in Global Marketing Campaign

Heineken partnered with Microsoft Azure CDN to support ambitious global marketing campaigns—starting with a 100‑MB Skyfall video and later a real‑time UEFA Champions League pinball game—requiring simultaneous launches in 70+ markets, low latency worldwide, and the ability to handle millions of concurrent users without building new datacenters. The core challenge was delivering flawless, high‑performance digital experiences at global scale while avoiding heavy capital and operational costs.

Heineken used Microsoft Azure CDN alongside Azure services (Table Storage, Traffic Manager, Virtual Machines, Visual Studio load testing and Microsoft Services support), expanding from 1 to 4 datacenters and scaling storage to 10,000 partitions to ensure geo‑redundancy and performance. Microsoft Azure CDN helped deliver content to 10.5 million consumers, supported 5.2 million players, achieved 2 million gameplays per hour with typical latency of 200–300 ms, exceeded SLAs with 100% reliability, and provided capacity for more than 40 million players—driving strong engagement, cost savings, and global reach.

Heineken

Lennart Boorsma

Digital Marketing Manager