SOFTSWISS executives detail infrastructure approach to market expansion
At its Tech Race Summit, SOFTSWISS technology chief Sergey Kastukevich and Servers.com operations chief Nick Dvas discussed how operators should plan infrastructure before entering new regulated markets.
Operators weighing a move into a new jurisdiction face a familiar fork: the expansion either pays off or saddles the business with unnecessary technical and operational complexity.
That was the starting point for a discussion held at last month's Tech Race Summit, an event organised by SOFTSWISS, between Sergey Kastukevich, the company's Chief Technology Officer, and Nick Dvas, Chief Operations and Product Officer at iGaming infrastructure provider Servers.com, as reported by SBC News.
The pair were asked what operators need to resolve before committing to a new market, and both pointed to regulation as the starting point rather than an afterthought.
Dvas noted that some jurisdictions insist data stays within their borders, forcing operators to build geographically distributed infrastructure, while other markets can impose conflicting rules on data protection, storage and retention.
He singled out sports betting as a particularly difficult case, arguing that systems need enough geographic spread to deliver a competitive user experience, yet enough coordination to prevent timing gaps between locations from opening up arbitrage opportunities when odds update unevenly.
Kastukevich said infrastructure planning has to be built into market-entry strategy from the outset, warning that treating it as secondary risks leaving each new jurisdiction with its own separate data environment and operational process.
He framed the objective not as simply replicating the platform locally, but as expanding it while keeping the system manageable and the customer experience consistent across markets.
On the question of what technology can simplify that expansion, cloud infrastructure has been the default answer for operators over the past decade, though the two executives suggested that is shifting.
Dvas said cloud computing remains a valuable enabler but can also inflate costs, pointing to the volume of data generated and processed by AI as a factor driving up storage, computation and data transfer expenses.
He argued the real decision facing operators is no longer whether to use cloud infrastructure, but how to apply it selectively to the parts of the business where it delivers the most value, calling this one of the most consequential financial and technical calls behind a successful market entry.
Looking toward the end of the decade, both executives expect iGaming infrastructure to become fully AI-native, with networking, storage and processing capacity built to support rapid growth, balanced against financial discipline.
Dvas also pointed to modular architecture as a response to tightening regulatory regimes, predicting it will shift from being a competitive edge to a baseline requirement for operators.
Kastukevich said closing the gap between gambling and technology expertise will matter even more as that shift plays out, which he described as the rationale behind creating the Tech Race Summit as a forum focused on the technical decisions underpinning sustainable growth, separate from existing industry events centred on commercial expansion.