25 million requests, zero downtime: how YARD and CWS launched in 7 days

Discover how agency collaboration and a cloud application platform built for scale delivered without fail.

When YARD and Creative Web Solutions - CWS were tasked with launching a fan-facing campaign website for a major global sports league event in Paris, the countdown was already underway. Leading the project was We Are Digital Producers, overseeing coordination across teams, while Local Studio handled the creative direction. What was initially scoped as a four-month project compressed into a few short weeks. The site needed to be live within seven days of the campaign launch.

Traffic expectations were vague at best. The client provided no concrete estimates, only an indication that demand would be substantial. The team planned for peak loads to reach 7,000 requests per second but had to prepare for the unexpected. The infrastructure needed to be agile. Time and budget were tight. There was zero room for failure.

"We've handled fast turnarounds before, but this was something else," said Grégory Driot, CEO and CTPO at CWS. “We had to get a live site up in days, and we had no visibility into expected traffic. We needed a platform that could carry us, technically and operationally.”

Choosing a platform that could keep up

Traditional cloud hosting wouldn't cut it. Provisioning infrastructure for a worst-case traffic scenario would have driven costs through the roof and left them with idle resources after the campaign. They needed an infrastructure partner that could scale dynamically with demand, move as fast as they did, and provide support in real-time.

Upsun's elastic scalability and developer-first onboarding model stood out. Even though CWS had never worked with Upsun before, they were able to deploy independently within three days of signing up.

"The onboarding process was honestly impressive," Grégory said. "We had never touched the platform before, and within 72 hours, we were deploying independently."

YARD led creative and production management, ensuring alignment with brand and campaign objectives. They relied on Upsun's support team to respond quickly to last-minute changes and evolving requirements.

"Upsun felt like a partner, not a vendor," said Angélique Sénégas, Account Manager at YARD. “They were there on Slack, fast to reply, helping us work through last-minute changes. For a time-sensitive campaign, that made all the difference.”

The stack behind the speed

CWS deployed a modern JAMstack architecture to deliver a performant front-end experience with decoupled back-end services. The stack included static site generation, API-driven services, and continuous integration via Git, all of which Upsun fully supported.

Upsun's infrastructure-as-code approach enables the team to stand up environments quickly and confidently. Its Git-native workflows, integrated directly into CWS's toolchain and preview environments, allowed for rapid internal approvals and collaboration. When it came time to go live, zero downtime deployment meant users never saw a flicker.

"The platform gave our devs full autonomy. We didn't lose time figuring out the infrastructure; we could just ship," said Grégory.

Scaling on demand, staying online

Once the site launched, the traffic arrived exactly as predicted: sudden, spiky, and sustained. The site served over 25 million HTTP requests during the campaign window. It sustained a monthly average of 5.36 million requests, peaked at 347 gigabytes of bandwidth, and logged more than one million requests in a single month post-launch.

Despite these spikes, the site experienced zero downtime. Upsun's autoscaling infrastructure scaled up to absorb demand and scale down immediately afterward. This not only preserved site performance but ensured infrastructure costs stayed aligned with actual usage.

"We didn't overpay for idle infrastructure," said Grégory. “The platform scaled up when we needed it and scaled-down right after. That efficiency was a huge win.”

Turning pressure into performance

For creative and technical teams under pressure to deliver fast, perform at scale, and stay under budget, this project offers a blueprint. YARD and CWS launched a global campaign site in under seven days, absorbed tens of millions of user requests, and kept everything running smoothly from the first hit to the final page view.

"This project set a new bar for what we can accomplish on short notice," said Angélique. "Upsun delivered on every front: speed, scale, support. It's a platform we'll use again.”

The outcome wasn't just a functional website; it was a powerful one. It provided a reliable and scalable digital experience that adapted to real-time demand. With the right platform partner, YARD and CWS turned an impossible timeline into a launch-day win.

Confident launches start with the right partner

The success of YARD and CWS wasn't a matter of luck. It came down to choosing a platform that made scaling simple, supported fast-moving teams, and delivered under pressure. With the right tools and partners, they not only met the brief but also exceeded it.

If you're building for events, campaigns, or product launches where failure isn't an option, this case study proves it's possible to deliver at scale without overprovisioning, rework, or stress. Don't wait for a crisis to rethink your infrastructure. Start with a platform that's ready for anything.