Umbraco Cloud Australian data centre welcomes first commercial customer

The Umbraco Cloud Australian data centre is now officially operational, with its first customer, R&J Batteries, being migrated to the new facility from Umbraco’s West Europe data centre. Australian-based Umbraco Platinum Partner, Luminary, successfully migrated R&J Batteries’ Australian and New Zealand websites – www.rjbatt.com.au and www.rjbatt.co.nz – to the new data centre on 12 December. 

The Australian data centre, announced in August 2023, allows Umbraco Cloud projects to be created and hosted in Australia. The expansion addresses rising demand for Umbraco Cloud in Australia and New Zealand, offering clients in the region improved website speed, with a 70 percent average response time reduction for Australian users compared to European hosting. Additionally, it ensures data sovereignty compliance and simplifies adherence to local data privacy regulations.

With the Australian regional hosting option, Umbraco Cloud now offers four hosting regions, with additional data centres in East US, West Europe, and South UK.

“The Australian data centre, made possible by close collaboration with Luminary, provides a basis for even more successful and faster Umbraco Cloud websites in the region and helps meet the growing demand we’re seeing in this market," said Umbraco CTO Filip Bech-Larsen. "Over the past year, we’ve seen a steady rise in interest in Umbraco Cloud in Australia and New Zealand, which made adding Australia to the list of regional hosting options the next logical step.

“We already have a number of Umbraco Cloud projects in the region, and being able to provide an even faster and better service, along with the data privacy benefits of regional hosting makes great sense. We’re sure we’ll see even more successful projects on Umbraco Cloud in this region very soon.”

Luminary CEO Marty Drill commented, “This is exciting! The migration of R&J Batteries to the Australian data centre really cements Luminary’s position as a pioneer in enterprise-level Umbraco solutions. Luminary became the first Umbraco Platinum Partner this year and was instrumental in lobbying for the data centre. We can now proudly say we are also responsible for hosting the first commercial customer at that centre. We are looking forward to supporting more customers to move to the Australian data centre in the coming months.”

Improved performance for R&J Batteries

“Luminary were able to assist us with a strategic move to reduce latency for our Australian and New Zealand customers by initiating a bold move to be one the first to establish local hosting of the Umbraco Cloud,” said Duncan Williams, R&J Batteries’ IT & Ecommerce Manager. “We had already taken advantage of the Umbraco platform and had connected this to an Australian based database for vehicle lookup, so it made more sense to connect locally and reduce overall latency. Luminary provided the confidence with inhouse Umbraco specialists and we are very proud to be the first Umbraco Cloud customer in Australia”

Battery Finder tool

“The battery finder functionality on the websites will greatly benefit from being hosted on Australian soil,” added Williams. “The vehicle make, model, year and rego checks in the tool access the PARts DB API hosted in Australia. With the move to the data centre in Australia East, these requests now don't need to make a round trip from Europe to Australia, which improves the responsiveness of the Battery Finder tool.”

A quick test on the Battery Finder tool yielded the following results when testing from an NBN home 100 Mbps download connection from a Melbourne suburb. Requests were made via the Postman App. 

Scenario 1 - Finding a battery for a Honda CB500F motorcycle

The Australian data centre reduced the average request time from 370 ms to 108 ms – more than a 71 percent increase in speed.

Scenario 2 - Finding a battery based on a Victorian registration number

The Australian data centre reduced the average request time for the rego check from 3550 ms to 784 ms – more than a 77 percent increase in speed.

Google Lighthouse scores

Lighthouse scores were measured for the home page.

Mobile performance

European data centre

Australian data centre

The mobile performance saw a 13 percent increase when served from the Australian data centre. The First Contentful Paint was 1.8s from the AU Umbraco Cloud Instance compared to the 6.0s from the EU Umbraco Cloud instance.

Desktop performance

European data centre

Australian data centre

The desktop performance saw a 34 percent increase when served from the Australian data centre. The First Contentful Paint was 0.6s from the AU Umbraco Cloud Instance compared to the 4.0s from the EU Umbraco Cloud instance.   

Acknowledgments

We'd like to thank R&J Batteries' digital agency ZeroSeven, the Umbraco Support and Hypercare teams, and our Umbraco Partner Liaison Manager Bryan O'Fiesh, all of whom were essential in the migration's success.