IAGA SUMMIT FOCUS: GAMING INNOVATIONS & TRENDS ACRES TECHNOLOGY
Gaming has come a long way from offering only basic three-reel slot machines and table games that didn’t require power: today’s land-based and online casinos offer a myriad of ‘innovative’ products and services that incorporate technologies that have long been standard in other industries.
However, many of these ‘cutting edge’ innovations that could enhance the gaming experience or streamline operations run into approval delays and other challenges because regulations are outdated or cumbersome, testing lags, or the industry is slow to adopt a new product without a proven ROI.
Ahead of his appearance on a future-forward session at IAGA 2022 examining new technologies, innovations and trends, Patrick Bland, CTO at Acres Technology, weighs in on the debate around local versus cloud-based hosting and the benefits and challenges of server location flexibility.
Having joined the gaming industry a year ago with a background in big tech and analytics, Patrick began our interview detailing how 'mind-blown' he was and remains about the outdated tech stacks being employed relative to other retail industries.
YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GONNA GET
Never in a million years did I think I’d end up in the gaming industry of all places. By education I’m a licensed tax attorney and I live in South Carolina where it’s illegal to even own a slot machine, so I can’t even have one in my garage to tinker with! I’ve always been an engineer at heart from writing code and building computers at seven years of age.
Tat skill set led to me working for a Sequoia, D.C. funded tech start-up in the legal technology space straight out of law school. Most recently, prior to joining Acres, I worked for a company called Splunk, which is involved in cybersecurity and the I.T. operations space. Tere, customers were dealing with massive amounts of data, ingesting 15-20 terabytes of machine data a day.
Frankly, I didn’t know who John Acres or Acres Technology were. I was an engineer at Splunk attending one of the tribal conferences walking around the expo floor. I saw this red box with serial cables hanging out the back with a little Acres background that made me stop. “It’s 2020 – why do you have that here?!”
So I sat there with John Acres and we hit it off. I was intrigued, did some work supporting Acres with Splunk and, when I heard they were looking to scale and grow, I grasped the opportunity to become CTO - Chief Nerd.
Coming to gaming as an outsider that has P76 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS “I quickly found out casinos
are comparatively blind about player behaviour, loyalty, and understanding their
customers. After 12 months, it’s still mind blowing. It’s like the industry has been on pause since the 90s with the
tech stacks that are employed and the way they’re managed. ‘Modern’ casino operations
have 30-year-old databases at the crux of everything they do - some are still using AS/400 mainframes!”
Patrick Bland Chief Technology Officer, Acres
Patrick Bland, Chief Technology Officer at Acres Technology, is a seasoned executive and leader with over 20 years of progressive technology experience across big data and analytics, legal, regulatory, business development, customer success, solutions engineering, and operations roles in multiple verticals.
neither gambled or visited casinos, I saw these fancy slot machines and had the impression that the slot floor must be a sea of real-time data. Just like any other retail operator, be it Best Buy, Apple, Walmart, I assumed casinos knew more about their customers than they themselves were aware of because they’re also a 24/7, 365 retail operation.
However, I quickly found out casinos are comparatively blind about player behaviour, loyalty, and understanding their customers. After 12 months, it’s still mind blowing. It’s like the industry has been on pause since the 90s with the tech stacks that are employed and the way they’re managed. ‘Modern’ casino operations have 30-year-old databases at the crux of everything they do - some are still using AS/400 mainframes!
Te way I’ve described this to my family and friends, who don’t really get it, is by using Google Maps as an example. When you zoom out, you see the United States, the state names, borders, etc. Tat is your view of the world, and this is the data definition operators are using to make critical business decisions.
What Foundation provides is the Zoom function - all the way to my house in South Carolina, with my nephew picking his nose in my garage and, because it’s real-time, I can tell him to ‘stop it off.’ Tat’s the level of data resolution we can provide to operators.
It doesn’t have to be this batch-based, after-the- fact process using previous months’ marketing reports and sifting through mailers. Te biggest and most obvious problem with this approach is that the player has already left the property.
THE BEAUTY OF A MODERN TECH STACK
On Facebook, you describe everything about yourself. For a player loyalty programme, it is simply name and address. Tere is no other information about the customer, let alone a favourite sports team or personal things meaningful to them that the casino can tailor experiences around.
Te beauty of having a modern technology stack is that it allows operators to understand player preferences and personalisation upon which to individually tailor bonuses and loyalty. For example, I’m currently wearing an Atlanta Braves baseball cap.
One of the things Foundation offers is the ability to trigger offers based on live sportsbooks. If I’m on a property and my favourite team or player hits a home run, we can use the modern delivery mechanism – a mobile phone – to tell me to sit down at a particular slot machine to double my winnings for X amount of time.
At Acres, we want everything to be through the mobile phone, which is still not the primary
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