Transforming a Global EdTech Platform with Azure Cosmos DB
Supporting 12 million students worldwide with personalized learning experiences and real-time analytics
Client Overview
A rapidly growing EdTech company delivering personalized learning paths, virtual classrooms, and AI-powered assessments to more than 12 million students worldwide.
Their platform supports K-12 and higher-education institutions across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. As the platform expanded, performance, data availability, and real-time personalization became critical for supporting global users with consistent, low-latency learning experiences.
Business Challenge
The client needed a database solution that could:
- •Serve millions of concurrent learners across multiple continents
- •Offer sub-10 ms latency for real-time quizzes, recommendations, and learning analytics
- •Support dynamic, personalized content for each student
- •Scale across peak exam seasons, when traffic grew by up to 600%
- •Integrate seamlessly with Azure Functions, Stream Analytics, and AI models
- •Ensure enterprise-grade security and compliance (FERPA, GDPR)
Their legacy on-prem NoSQL solution struggled to handle read/write spikes and required heavy manual sharding. This resulted in slow page loads, inconsistent recommendation results, and high operational effort from the engineering team.
Solution: Azure Cosmos DB-Powered Learning Platform
Global Distribution for Fast Learning Experiences
We deployed Cosmos DB across five Azure regions, enabling students to read and write data from the nearest datacenter. This created seamless performance for real-time quiz responses, classroom session updates, student activity streams, and progress tracking. Latency dropped from 120 ms to <10 ms globally.
Personalized Learning at Scale
Using Cosmos DB's flexible schema and massive throughput, we stored student profiles, assessment histories, recommendation vectors, learning path graphs, and engagement events (30M+ per day). Cosmos DB's integration with Azure Functions + Change Feed allowed AI models to update personalized recommendations in real-time.
High Availability During Exam Surges
Using autoscale throughput, the system automatically scaled to handle 6-7x spikes during exam weeks, with 250K+ writes per second and millions of simultaneous quiz question fetches. No downtime. No throttling. No manual intervention.
Secure and Compliant Data Architecture
We implemented private endpoints, VNet integration, Azure AD RBAC, fine-grained permissions for instructors/admins/students, and end-to-end encryption. This ensured compliance with FERPA, COPPA, and GDPR.
Real-Time Analytics for Educators
Using Cosmos DB analytical store + Synapse Link, schools received real-time class performance dashboards, early-warning indicators for at-risk students, and instant scoring on assessments. Insights that previously took hours were now available in under 10 seconds.
Results
90% Improvement in Global Latency
From 100-200ms baseline to <10ms for most operations
600% Traffic Surge Handling
Zero downtime with predictable RU cost governance
40% Reduction in Operational Overhead
No more manual sharding or infrastructure patching
Real-Time AI Personalization
Dynamic learning paths tailored to each student
35% Improved Student Engagement
Faster load times and instant feedback loops
Compliance Achieved
Secure data boundaries across all global regions
Conclusion
Azure Cosmos DB empowered the EdTech provider to deliver a fast, reliable, globally distributed learning experience tailored for modern education. By leveraging Cosmos DB's multi-region architecture, change feed processing, and real-time analytics, the platform now supports millions of students with high performance, personalization, and uninterrupted uptime.
A scalable, intelligent, world-class education platform built for the future of learning.
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