Case Study: NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) achieves real-time scalability for 22.3M users and 91.5M page views with Microsoft Azure

Santa Tracker Moves to New Service, Gives Real-Time Insight to More Than 22 Million

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) operates the annual NORAD Tracks Santa site to let the public track Santa in real time, but its growing audience created a major scalability and performance challenge: delivering consistently fast, reliable access to more than 22 million users across desktops and mobile devices during huge traffic spikes on December 24.

NORAD migrated the site to Windows Azure and partnered with iLink and other vendors to redesign the UI, add responsive 2D/3D maps and mobile apps, and use Azure CDN, blob storage, caching and load‑balancing. The revamped service supported 22.3 million unique visitors and 91.5 million page views in 48 hours, delivered ~99.95% availability, boosted social engagement by 23%, increased govsite traffic by 650%, and improved educational and cross‑device experiences.

NORAD

Marisa Novobilski

Strategic Outreach Specialist, Public Affairs