In today’s technology-heavy, innovation-driven economy, students need the opportunity to learn computer science concepts and skills. That’s where Code.org comes in. Dedicated to expanding access to computer science education, the nonprofit organization provides free K–12 computer science curriculum, an online learning platform, and teacher training.

In addition to operating the learning platform that powers Code.org courses in hundreds of thousands of classrooms around world, the organization coordinates the Hour of Code every year. A global celebration and learning event, The Hour of Code takes place during Computer Science Education Week and reaches 100 million students in more than 180 countries.

To support more than 100,000 Hour of Code events around the world successfully during the week, Code.org needs both scalability and availability on a massive scale. “In terms of scalability, we have to prepare for 10 times more traffic on our website during the week, and we have one chance to get it right,” says Jeremy Stone, CTO of Code.org. “If we don’t have the compute capacity to meet the traffic demand, the events won’t work. And reliability is equally important, because students can’t code if our site is down.” Code.org must also comply with strict data protection controls. “As an EdTech company with a lot of student data, we are subject to very stringent security requirements,” Stone says.