Case study

How DataPacket helped Picarto.tv become a one‑of‑a‑kind platform

Picarto.tv is one of the few who succeeded with a live-streaming service. Their ever-growing community found with them what was lacking elsewhere – an exceptional platform run by people who truly cared. That’s precisely why Picarto has counted on DataPacket since its beginnings – proving that providing high-quality service while maintaining a personal touch builds relationships that last.

Picarto.tv is a live-streaming platform for artists owned by 3Logic System. Founded by Ozcan Dogan in 2013, Picarto was the first-ever platform to emphasize creative live streaming. They revolutionized the genre by introducing brand-new features like multistreaming or private streaming. Besides that, they keep being popular by engaging with the community, running art contests, gallery shows, and many more.

Challenge

Long-response time of customer service & need for higher uplink

Picarto started as an idea of a university student, Ozcan Dogan, who wanted to provide a streaming platform for artists (at the time, there was only Twitch dedicated to gamers). It soon became apparent that Ozcan had found a gap in the market – the number of artists and their audiences skyrocketed.

If 7 000 people are watching a streamer drawing and the screen goes black, what’s the point of the service

With a growing list of users and thus an increasing need for new infrastructure, Picarto ran into their first serious problem with their current provider – lousy customer service.

There was no one on the phone ever. If you have an incident, and there’s no one helping you in the situation, you start losing customers right away, Ozcan Dogan describes. When 7 000 people are watching a streamer drawing and the screen goes black, what’s the point of the service? he asks.

As a live streaming service, you must be demanding of the partners you entrust to run your platform.

Thus Picarto decided to find a new provider that would reach their high demands on both customer care and enough bandwidth for their growing community. After a recommendation from a friend, they approached DataPacket.

As a live streaming service, you must be demanding of the partners you entrust to run your platform, Ozcan explains. DataPacket made sense servicewise, optionwise... Also, the pricing was interesting for a small startup like us back then.

The solution:

20GE uplinks, high-quality network, four servers in the USA, 24/7 customer care

When Picarto.tv came to us with an inquiry, we were ready to rise to the challenge. They represent the perfect customer for DataPacket – in need of a high-bandwidth server infrastructure they can rely on. Backed up with 24/7 individual support that responds quickly to resolve any issues. This is exactly what we love to do, Simon Rybisar, Sales Director of DataPacket, says.

To ensure the collaboration would work, Picarto got a trial. After that, they gradually purchased servers in four locations: Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and New York with CPUs 2xE5-2620v3 and 2xE5-2620v4.

Demanding bandwidth requirements for the live‑streaming platform

The market standard for speed and bandwidth wasn’t established much back in the day. DataPacket was one of the few offering 10GE uplinks.

Streaming is always demanding on the internet bandwidth, in Picarto’s case they needed bandwidth 12 Gbps. By providing them with 20 Gbps (2×10GE LACP bond) uplink on each server, we ensured that they only needed a single machine in each location they wanted, Simon explains.

Nowadays, as the technology goes forward, DataPacket offers even higher uplinks (2×100GE per server).

Immediate troubleshooting & non-stop customer care

While being settled in Germany, Picarto had customers mainly in the US, so there was often a need for a quick response in the middle of the night Europe time. When they started, there was no such thing as a reliable DDoS protection. In case of an outage, a quick response from the customer service line was essential.

For live-streaming services, quick response is essential.

Our aim has always been to provide an individual approach. That’s why we prefer having smaller numbers of larger and long-term customers – we want to know about everyone. If there is a failure, they get a solution within the same day, Simon comments. We now offer built-in DDoS protection free of charge with all our services, but of course, 24/7 individual customer care remains he adds.

Discounted hardware upgrade

After years of collaboration, the hardware that Picarto used became obsolete. As their long year account manager knowing perfectly their use case, Simon dug into details to provide them with a hardware upgrade on discounted terms – new machines built with 2 x Silver 4210 CPU.

Our cooperation with Picarto TV is stable, long-term, and simply humanly pleasant. We are happy to see the success of such a project. It was, therefore, natural to consider this in the price for the new hardware, Simon from DataPacket explains.

The best possible network in the USA

A top-notch network is a must for a live-streaming service and DataPacket has always strived for the highest quality. In recent years, however, DataPacket directly peered into the most prominent internet providers in the USA, such as Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, and all the others.We have worked extremely hard on the quality of the network to the point where no one on the market can offer a better solution, Simon says.

The result:

Outperforming the competition with exceptional services and a loyal community basis

The cooperation between Picarto and DataPacket began when both services and even the industry’s evolution were emerging; hence, hardware and network errors occasionally occurred. Since DataPacket was still working on refining its services, naturally, there were initial hitches.

There was always a willingness to do it better. You guys are polite. You are available.

What kept Picarto sticking with DataPacket, though, was the customer care and the willingness to solve problems immediately. I could write an email: What’s happening to server A, B, or C? at any time, and 2 minutes later, there’s an answer: Sorry. Ozcan laughs. But after a short time, I got the message: Service is up again. There were bumps. But there was always a willingness to do it better. You guys are polite. You are available.

Since then, DataPacket has transformed into a premium service, offering bigger uplinks and the highest quality network yet keeping individual customer care. We still feel personally assisted. It’s nice, Ozcan sums up.

It’s cozy at Picarto.

Now, Picarto has one of the most loyal communities in the market, which is constantly growing. It’s matured from a live-streaming platform to much more – a place where artists feel at home. When you ask them what’s so special about Picarto, they say: It’s cozy at Picarto.

If someone asks me what dedicated servers they should use, I always say DataPacket.

Although Picarto is no longer the only main business that Ozcan and his colleagues run, it remains the most loved one. Picarto is such a big platform not only from a business perspective. We learned how to serve software for many people and about scalability, robustness, and security. For instance, we got many new customers for streaming services during the pandemic. We could build a learning platform from scratch. And if someone asks me what dedicated servers they should use, I always say DataPacket. There’s a relationship when your name comes.

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