Bonnier News accelerates innovation and strengthens security with Fastly's programmable edge platform

The challenge

Bonnier News, a major Nordic media company based in Stockholm, Sweden, holds approximately 45% of the market share in the Swedish newspaper and magazine industry. With roots dating back to the 1830s when it began as a book publisher, Bonnier News has grown to encompass a wide portfolio of brands across Sweden, Finland, and other European countries.

"Bonnier News has had a history of integrating a lot of different companies through mergers and acquisitions," explains Fabian Seitz, Head of Digital Platforms at Bonnier News. As a Google Cloud Partner, Fabian says, "We had many different technologies which we had to merge into one solution." This fragmentation created operational complexity, with multiple teams working with different approaches and technology stacks. Additionally, as a major news publisher, Bonnier News frequently faced DDoS attacks, especially during breaking news events, threatening the availability of their services.

The solution

After evaluating several vendors, Bonnier News selected Fastly as their new content delivery network (CDN) provider. "We found Fastly very appealing for a number of reasons," Seitz says. "The configuration is very appealing, you can use VCL as a standardized language, which is open to everyone and relatively easy to learn."

Beyond the technical benefits, Bonnier News appreciated Fastly's collaborative approach. "The attitude from Fastly towards us was very good. We felt it was the right partner – very solutions-oriented, open, and helpful," notes Seitz. "Fastly staff always tried to understand our problem instead of just trying to sell us a solution."

The migration to Fastly included transitioning from Akamai’s proprietary ESI (Edge Side Includes) implementation to Fastly Compute. "We identified early that ESI would be a major obstacle in the process," explains Seitz. "Fastly developed, based on a tool we already had internally, an implementation which worked but was unfortunately very slow. But then we were able to transform that into a new version, and Fastly helped us all the way."

Improved performance and real-time control

Following the migration to Fastly, Bonnier News saw immediate improvements in site performance. "When we implemented the first Compute services to replace these older solutions, the sites became quite a bit faster," reports Seitz. "That was very helpful for search engine optimization and overall user experience."

The ability to implement infrastructure as code was particularly valuable for Bonnier News, with its portfolio of more than 200 different brands. "When we made a decision to go with Fastly, one major factor was that we wanted to have infrastructure as code. We wanted to use Terraform, which is an industry standard, to be the basis of our future setups," explains Seitz. "Fastly already had great tools in place to make that work."

Robust security against attacks

Security was a primary driver for Bonnier News to seek a new CDN solution. "Our initial reason to look for a new CDN was that we had some issues during a big election in Sweden, which happens every four years. We were hit by an attack and had major issues," recounts Seitz. "Fastly has become a really important part of that, especially in the last few months with numerous attacks on us and issues with bots."

Implementing Fastly's Next-Gen WAF with Bot Management has significantly improved their security posture. "We've been hit by quite large attacks and we didn't even notice because they were blocked by the WAF," says Seitz. "We hardly feel the attacks anymore."

Accelerating innovation through developer empowerment

The migration to Fastly unlocked new opportunities for innovation within the Bonnier News development team. “Fastly’s platform encouraged us to rethink our approach to compute solutions,” Seitz explains. “While we had explored compute solutions theoretically before, working with Fastly inspired us to implement a cutting-edge tool in Compute, allowing us to seamlessly replace ESI with a Jinja-based solution built in Rust. Fastly’s flexibility and support were key in overcoming initial challenges and driving this successful transformation.”

This challenge became a catalyst for innovation. "That actually created a spark of creativity. It really fast-tracked a lot of innovation," says Seitz. "We went from the first ideas to the first real proof of concept, which was working and showing the desired results, within 4 to 6 weeks. That brought the whole team together to develop this common solution and implement it very quickly."

Key takeaway

For Bonnier News, transitioning to Fastly has delivered more than just technical benefits—it has helped foster a more unified company culture across their historically fragmented organization. "To start fresh with one common solution has helped build a certain company culture," Seitz says. "We built up common knowledge, common ways to work, and a common culture. That helps a lot to make it more efficient."

Looking ahead, Bonnier News is exploring additional ways to use Fastly Compute. "We have the goal to move more toward a zero-trust approach, so we want to implement solutions to ensure environments are only reached by authenticated users," Seitz shares. "We're also thinking about solutions for logging and tracking using logic at the edge to make that work better, so we can move it closer to the customer."

Seitz summarizes Fastly's impact: "Bonnier News has found the right partner with Fastly. It has helped a lot to develop our own culture and our own internal development by finding a common solution which works for everyone and has a lot of potential to grow in the future."