Case Study: HEINEKEN achieves global reach and campaign scalability with Microsoft Dynamics 365

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

HEINEKEN, the Amsterdam‑based brewer operating in 178 countries, faced a major technology challenge when it centralized global marketing and launched simultaneous worldwide campaigns—first a 100 MB Skyfall video and then a live UEFA Champions League pinball game. The company needed to deliver high‑bandwidth content with low latency and support up to 1 million simultaneous users worldwide; its outsourced datacenter lacked the scale, geographic reach, and reliability required.

HEINEKEN chose Microsoft Azure, using the Azure CDN to deliver the Skyfall film to 10.5 million consumers and expanding from one to four Azure datacenters for geo‑redundancy and low latency for the UCL game. The solution used Azure Table Storage (10,000 partitions), Visual Studio load testing, and Microsoft consulting; it supported 2 million gameplays per hour, handled 5.2 million players during the campaign with capacity for over 40 million, delivered typical latencies of 200–300 ms, and drove reliable, scalable deployments and further cloud adoption across the company.

Heineken

Lennart Boorsma

Digital Marketing Manager