Dutch public broadcaster NPO has thousands of programs, all of which are increasingly viewed online and streamed live. In the most extreme scenario, 17 million Dutch people can watch them simultaneously. Especially when Tom Dumoulin is about to win the Tour de France or when 'we' become world champions. The NPO must then be ready for the whole of the Netherlands to tune in, particularly now that more people are streaming from their phones instead of turning on the TV - which is made possible by Google Cloud.

Programmes such as Vrije Geluiden (classical music programme) and VPRO Books may not attract millions of live streams on a Sunday morning, but if they do, it must be available to all users. This is still quite a challenge, given the potential reach of the NPO. The old NPO system could not always handle the number of users. The challenge: ‘How can the servers keep up with a high number of users?’.

“NPO has gratefully used the infrastructure and infinite capacity of Google Cloud Platform while serving the Dutch public with the beautiful content of the NPO. The high degree of scalability makes GCP our only Public Cloud Provider that we use during major peaks in the media”. - Rogier Kuijt, Teamleader Infrastructure

Incentro had to lend a hand. So, together with NPO, we chose to run the live stream infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform. The reason: Google Cloud Platform is the largest and most reliable platform, and this is what you need if a large part of the Netherlands wants to be able to stream at the same time.

Google Cloud Platform automatically distributes viewers over the servers provided by their internet provider. This minimises any glitches and delays. After some old code was dusted off and Google Cloud Platform was implemented, the live stream could launch.

  • Google knows best
    Lots of extra viewers? No problem. Google automatically scales up.

  • Want to push the buttons yourself?
    NPO can also easily adjust the capacity.

  • Completely in the cloud
    Fewer delays and buffering.

See for yourself! All the traffic goes through the cloud. The platform is scaled automatically based on the number of viewers. That means that 17 million people can now watch simultaneously.