Scaling global operations through Jira Cloud transformation: The Kaizen Gaming story
See how Adaptavist helped this hyper-growth iGaming tech company to migrate 3 million tickets to Jira Cloud with zero disruption.
Αbout Kaizen Gaming
More than just a tech company, Kaizen Gaming is a rapidly growing powerhouse in the iGaming space. Operating across multiple continents, they serve a global player base in a highly competitive, zero-tolerance-for-error industry. At the time of their move to cloud, Kaizen Gaming were also hiring quickly, requiring enterprise-grade infrastructure capable of keeping pace with fast, sustained growth.
Area: GameTech
Number of employees: 3000+
Solution: Jira Cloud
The challenge
An infrastructure under strain
With many new employees joining each month, Kaizen Gaming was quickly outgrowing its on-premises Jira environment. Recurring downtime, slow manual upgrades, and poor plugin compatibility created operational drag and widespread outages, jeopardising some essential business processes. Kaizen Gaming knew this was unsustainable in a competitive industry demanding speed and reliability.
The need for a single source of truth
The ambition was to establish a single, trusted platform for all company information, but the existing on-premises setup was struggling to support this vision.
A move to cloud with no margin for error
The migration element of this project was extremely complex due to operational constraints. Kaizen Gaming's primary Jira users, the 24/7/365 global Customer Service and Operations teams, could not have a maintenance window. Data loss was unacceptable. One major task involved migrating 3 million tickets for a single department over one weekend, all while keeping operations live.
Desire for change
Alongside the technical complexity, Kaizen Gaming faced a significant human challenge. Many employees found the existing on-premises Jira environment frustrating to use. This large, globally distributed workforce knew things needed to change, and had high hopes for the new system. But how quickly people would embrace it was a critical variable, and far less controllable than the technical migration itself.
The solution
Moving to the cloud was never just about lifting and shifting; it was an opportunity to rethink how Kaizen Gaming's tools and processes could work better, now and in the future. Where the original platform had limitations, Adaptavist worked alongside Kaizen Gaming to reimagine those workflows for a cloud-native environment, building tailored solutions that didn't simply replicate what existed before but improved on it.
A phased approach built around complexity and capacity
Adaptavist implemented a five-phase approach, beginning with the most straightforward teams through to the most complex. Already well-versed in Jira, Kaizen Gaming’s Tech team were the first to migrate, allowing the approach to be validated and refined before rolling out to more operationally complex teams. Phase scheduling was also aligned with different time zones and seasonality, avoiding high-demand periods to minimise disruption.
Keeping the engine running mid-flight
We guaranteed 24/7 uptime by executing updates with minimal or zero downtime. Where documentation gaps existed, we helped map ownership by tracing the last editors and reconstructing accountability chains, ensuring nothing was missed and that every single asset was accounted for during the move.
Translating the past, building for the future
Adaptavist partnered with Kaizen Gaming's teams to migrate existing, often manual, on-premise Customer Service workflows to the new cloud infrastructure, guaranteeing continuous operation. This transformation also provided an opportunity to streamline processes by leveraging the cloud platform's improved design for greater efficiency.
Driving adoption through ambassadors and knowledge sharing
To address the cultural challenge head-on, we launched an internal ambassador programme. Early adopters quickly became advocates, sharing positive experiences and supporting colleagues' training. This consistent knowledge transfer ensured Kaizen Gaming's teams built genuine capability and confidence in the new Jira product, accelerating adoption of the new platform.
The Adaptavist team approached the project as if they were working within Kaizen Gaming, not just for us. The high level of trust and commitment shown was truly remarkable.
Charis Christoforidis
Internal Systems & Tools Manager, Kaizen Gaming
Results
Successful cloud adoption has transformed Kaizen Gaming's business operations, providing a scalable foundation for future growth and establishing a widely used source of truth.
By approaching the project as a cloud transformation, exploring ways to optimise and transform processes rather than simply migrating data, Kaizen Gaming has completely evolved how work is delivered.
~€350K cost savings achieved from tool consolidation
Three million tickets migrated for a single department in one weekend
Near-zero downtime achieved across 24/7 global operations
Scalability to support rapid growth now and in the future
Increased internal user buy-in, adoption and collaboration
Enhanced capabilities through integrations and automation
What's next?
With their Atlassian environment now in the cloud and integral to daily operations, Kaizen Gaming's immediate next step is governance. This will involve project management and administration, defining access controls for internal security, and establishing Jira guardrails.
The exceptional efforts and dedication shown by Adaptavist were truly remarkable, as always. The entire team remained focused on delivering the best possible solution, and we appreciated how safe we felt when tasks were delegated, trusting that team members would execute their responsibilities. The knowledge sharing throughout the project was highly beneficial, too.
Charis Christoforidis
Internal Systems & Tools Manager, Kaizen Gaming