January 2025 Summaries

Ably Pub/Sub has introduced a cost optimization feature called server-side message batching to address the challenges of high-scale, high-frequency messaging and burst activity. This feature reduces the number of messages sent over the network, optimizing bandwidth usage and lowering costs. By combining multiple messages into batches, developers can focus on application development instead of working through the mechanics of batching. The feature offers predictable cost reductions and latency, allowing users to customize the batching interval to suit their specific needs. It is particularly beneficial for high-volume chat applications, fan engagement platforms, virtual events, and collaboration tools that experience spikes in message volumes during high-impact events or user concurrency. With simple configuration through the Ably dashboard, developers can start batching messages quickly and easily, without extra development work or cognitive load.

The Australian Open is one of the world's premier annual sporting events, attracting a record-breaking 1.11 million fans to Melbourne Park in 2024 and reaching over 558 million unique global viewers, a 57% increase from the previous year. The event faces significant challenges in delivering a seamless digital experience to its global audience, particularly with regards to realtime data delivery and monetizing the digital audience at scale. Achieving this requires meticulous planning, ensuring redundancy across multiple regions, and having fallback protocols in place to support websocket streaming on older devices. Tennis Australia has partnered with Ably, a global realtime experiences platform, to meet these challenges, enabling them to focus on delivering engaging content and enhancing the fan experience. The partnership has allowed Tennis Australia to avoid building complex realtime infrastructure, instead trusting Ably to manage scalability and growth, while also driving innovation in areas such as generative AI-powered tennis leagues.

Ably Chat has released its new SDKs with the addition of message editing and deletion features, enabling richer chat experiences and simplifying cross-platform development. The feature allows users to edit and delete messages within their chat applications, ensuring greater control and accuracy in communication, which enhances the user experience by enabling them to refine their messages and manage their chat history effectively. This is a crucial feature for modern chat applications in use cases ranging from livestreams to customer support, including those integrating moderation tools. The new SDKs now support multiple platforms, including JavaScript, React, Kotlin, Swift, allowing developers to create cross-platform chat experiences with the same codebase, enabling improved developer velocity and faster time-to-market.

Ably LiveSync is a potential alternative to MongoDB Atlas Device Sync, offering real-time synchronization of database changes to devices at scale. It allows for large numbers of changes to be propagated to end-user devices in real-time and stores the changes in various local storage options. The solution explores why on-device storage is critical, existing solutions, and demonstrates how Ably LiveSync's MongoDB connector can help with a code tutorial. On-device storage is crucial for apps requiring offline access or fast performance, such as e-commerce inventory apps. It provides several benefits, including offline access, improved performance, cost efficiency, and user experience. Modern mobile operating systems offer various ways to store information on devices, includingUserDefaults, CoreData, SQLite, shared preferences, Room database, and file storage. Ably LiveSync can synchronize data from managed or on-premises databases to mobile devices in real-time, supporting MongoDB and PostgresSQL, with plans to add support for other database engines. The solution involves creating a simple in-store management app using React Native and SQLite for local storage, integrating the Ably SDK callback methods to store documents and changes inside the local SQLite database. It sets up an integration rule that syncs the MongoDB database with Ably, receives database changes from the configured Ably channel, and persists changes locally, ensuring an up-to-date inventory system even when offline. The solution is built on top of Ably Pub/Sub, offering predictable performance, guaranteed ordering and delivery, fault-tolerant infrastructure, high scalability and availability, optimized build times and costs, and a battle-tested deployment process.

The sports betting industry is rapidly growing due to changing regulations, technological advancements, and a strong desire for real-time interactions from consumers. To sustain this growth, data providers and betting companies must ensure fast, low latency delivery of data and services, even as they scale operations worldwide. Low latency is crucial in the sports betting ecosystem, as every second matters for bettors, and delays can impact user retention and create financial exposure for operators. Consistent low latency and the ability to handle disconnections are key infrastructure requirements to ensure a consistent user experience, regardless of location or time. Companies like Genius Sports deliver critical data at a global scale using cloud-native distributed infrastructure that leverages WebSocket-based realtime data streaming solutions. As the industry becomes more competitive, betting companies are incorporating innovative ways to deliver real-time experiences, such as interactive features and chat functionality, to keep their customers engaged and retain them on-platform.