BET SOFTWARE: Betting Software Solutions Disrupting the Global Game

In just 11 short years, BET Software has come a long way from humble beginnings as a tiny start-up in a small department within Hollywoodbets, one of the largest bookmakers in South Africa. The tenacity and fearlessness of its team of a few developers allowed them to build a cutting-edge betting software system for South Africa’s leading bookmaker, constructed from the ground up, along with a range of other solutions. “We are now capable of rivalling the very best around the world,” GM Michael Collins asserts.

The quick evolution of the software development department resulting in its outgrowing its commercial parent, and since flying the Hollywoodbets nest. “This has allowed us to become the innovative, stand-alone software development house we are today,” Collins explains.

“We are one of the largest, most diverse betting software providers in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing reliable and user-friendly betting software on a global scale.”

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

It was in 2016 that the development team within Hollywoodbets – which BET Software has retained as a client – grew too large for an in-house support function, and 25 team members were all transitioned into Betting Entertainment Technologies, leaving the Hollywoodbets base in June and moving into a new building in Umhlanga, at Tetford Circle.

By September, online customer migration, as well as Hollywoodbets retail transition over to SyX, an application billed as extraordinary in its ability to result large volumes of transactions in rapid time, was complete.

Five years later, all remaining shared services from Hollywoodbets had moved directly into BET Software, and rebranded as such, with a team of nearly 300 ‘All-Stars’ – the talent that BET Software proudly recruits and cultivates – dedicated to refining their respective crafts and maintaining the incredible growth that has defined BET Software to date.

“We may be a well-oiled machine, but our people are far from cogs. Armed with an arsenal of learning and development programmes, various opportunities for growth and well-deserved incentives, our BET Software All-Star Army is well-equipped to push the boundaries of excellence,” GM Michael Collins furthers, linking this ethos to enabling the company to better serve both each other and clients. “It shows in everything – from what we develop and produce, to what we value and believe.”

At its root, this is a formidable tech provider to betting operators, outlines Collins, supplying all of the back-end betting engines and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to the biggest operators, to use on all events from bets being struck to settled. “We facilitate every one of these types of mechanisms,” Collins says, “including integrations with third parties, to our main marketplaces of South Africa and Mozambique.”

Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya are also gaining traction for BET Software, Collins shares, with local development arms established within those territories.

RED HAT

Collins pinpoints the company’s strategic partnerships with some major cloud service providers as a key differentiator for BET Software, and in particular the association it enjoys with Red Hat, whose portfolio encompasses hybrid cloud infrastructure, cloud-native application development, and management and automation solutions.

“We haven’t quite gone about this in the traditional sense,” he relays, “as we do not use a traditional cloud provider like Azure or similar – we have actually built our own private cloud on the Red Hat backbone, buying all of the infrastructure and then having them install Red Hat directly onto, essentially, a piece of tin.

“Effectively, we have thus built our own distributed cloud network across multiple data centres in South Africa, into which we are developing. That gives us a lot more control over costs, and the way in which we move data around distributed data centres, without it being a service that we are looking to other providers for.

“The partnership with Red Hat was key to achieving that, as they had to build it from scratch. This was not something to which they were accustomed either – someone telling them to install the Red Hat operating system onto bare metal, not part of a pre-built cloud – but it allows us to ensure that we bring the services closer to clients around the country, locally.

“It also means that if we need to go into other cloud services, like an AWS, for example, it is simply a case of provisioning a node in a cloud platform that would then link directly into our own.”

Of all the work ongoing at BET Software currently, Collins explains, this is potentially the biggest and most important. “It takes us from a single point of failure to a distributed type of environment – we are no longer held against one monolithic structure to distribute everything,” he clarifies, which he reveals is pivotal to every company like this.

“Distributed architecture, rather than the monolithic structures of the past, should be at the forefront of all of their minds,” Collins affirms. “Although monolithic has its place, and it does make troubleshooting a lot easier, as a company gets bigger it becomes a catastrophic point of failure that you have to spend a lot of time trying to avoid; with distributed architecture failure is limited to much smaller segments of the business, so such catastrophes can be mitigated.”

CSI

“Ubuntu is at the heart of everything we do. And that is why we are intentional about leaving a lasting social justice footprint. When BET Software started, we found that some learners and schools in the Durban area lacked access to computer labs, or their computers were outdated or non-functional. This shortfall that schools were experiencing posed huge challenges,” says Collins.

That’s where BET Software stepped in.

“We assist in developing learners’ technological skills. We facilitate their growth by providing a solid foundation that allows them to excel in their future careers in a technologically-driven world. We have seen a sustainable and meaningful impact as a result of our work. Learners have become more confident,” Collins adds.

BET Software’s CSI initiatives also include a graduate and bursary programme. The company’s “Dare To Dream” bursary programme provides funding to ICT students at accredited tertiary institutions around the country, and the graduate programme offers work experience to graduate trainees, with the goal of absorbing them into the company.

VISION

BET Software’s ethos and values centre around disruptive innovation, accountability and authenticity and integrity. “Further to these, we embrace collaboration, diversity and empowerment,” Collins stresses, and when it comes to his vision for the company’s future, there are a few essential elements which he wishes to tick off.

“First of all, we want to enable operators to be able to transition between platforms with far more efficiency and ease, rather than feeling beholden to one singular betting platform as they currently are.

“At the moment it is almost impossible, because people are locked into a platform; the likes of monday.com allow people to try 20 different project management cloud offerings before they settle on something that they like, and we see no reason why it should be any different with the betting platform provider as an operator.

“Our overarching vision,” Collins closes, “is to create software as a service for the industry, whereby it is also possible to choose certain components from several platforms. For example, if someone wants to choose horse racing from us because we are the leader, but we are terrible at sports betting, they can build up a portfolio that encompasses their choice of the best of breed for each different element.

“It could be the death knell for us, because we could be rubbish at everything,” Collins wryly smiles, but there is little chance of that: the ability to forge close relationships with customers and provide leading-edge betting platforms, as well as 24/7 support, customisation, and optimisation that surpasses customer expectations makes BET Software truly the ace in the hole.