How a SaaS Company Improved Efficiency, Security, and Compliance

Client Brief

Our client is a SaaS company that provides an innovative platform for managing IT assets. To gain a competitive edge over their competitors they have decided to move their infrastructure from legacy servers to modern architecture. Additionally, they wanted to adopt the DevOps approach to reduce development time, decrease the time of software delivery to the market, and scale their business much faster.

Business Challenge

They had a few large VMs hosted in Azure, that were used for hosting their entire environment. They were new to DevOps principles and were unsure of how to adopt them. We helped them understand what are the key DevOps principles, how those principles relate to their existing workflows, and how to adopt them.

Rapid development of the product resulted in slow, cumbersome, and error-prone workflows. The approach to infrastructure was not streamlined or secure. Heavy workloads forced engineers to handle issues as they came, without having time to consider the impact on the existing infrastructure. This led to:

• Having no process for building and deploying software to production: This led to a lack of consistency and repeatability, making it difficult to ensure the quality and reliability of their software releases.
• Lack of Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Not implementing IaC was both inefficient and costly, and it also increased the risk of human error, primarily due to the need for manual changes
• No backups: This left their data vulnerable to loss or corruption.
• Security issues: This put their systems and data at risk of cyberattacks.
• Inadequate Monitoring and Alerting: Insufficient monitoring and alerting systems meant that issues often went undetected until they caused significant problems.
• Lack of Collaboration Between Teams: The traditional disconnected approach between development and operations teams impeded effective collaboration and communication.

These challenges resulted in a number of negative consequences for the business, including:

• Delayed time to market: It took longer to bring new products and features to market due to the slow and cumbersome workflows.
• Increased operational costs: The manual management of infrastructure and the lack of backups led to increased operational costs.
• Reduced revenue: Security issues could have led to data breaches and other disruptions, which could have caused a loss of revenue and customers.
• Unpredictable Scalability: Without automated scaling mechanisms and resource optimization, the organization struggled to handle sudden increases in workload or traffic.
• Difficulty in Compliance and Auditing: The lack of proper DevOps practices made compliance with industry regulations and auditing challenging.
• Limited Disaster Recovery Preparedness: In the absence of robust backup and disaster recovery strategies, the organization was ill-prepared for catastrophic events.

Our goal was to improve the efficiency, productivity, scalability, and security of the client’s infrastructure. We wanted to streamline workflows, reduce the risk of errors, and protect the business's data and systems from cyberattacks. By addressing these challenges, we would help the client to achieve their strategic goals.

Our Approach

This project required a complete redesign of the client's end-to-end approach to managing their software and infrastructure. We started by collaborating with the client to understand their current management workflows and identify areas for improvement. Next, we identified all of the moving parts of their existing infrastructure and developed a plan for implementing the necessary changes. Finally, we considered how to migrate the existing software to the new environment with minimal disruption.

Once we collected all of the important data, we proceeded to start implementing different tools that would support the new workflows. As we were implementing them we were onboarding engineers on how to use them in their workflows.

Next, we deployed a highly available, secured, and scalable infrastructure that was designed with disaster recovery in mind. We also implemented security best practices to protect the client's sensitive data.

Once the new workflows and infrastructure were in place, we migrated the existing software without any data loss. After we finished the project, we continued to work with the client for another month to ensure that the new workflows were being followed and were providing value. We were pleased to see that the engineers were happy to adopt the new workflows, as they streamlined and simplified their work.

The Business Outcome

Our efforts have delivered significant benefits to the client's business:

• Accelerated Development: Weekly infrastructure deployments, compared to bi-monthly, have improved feature development speed, enabling agile responses to market demands.
• Seamless Scalability: Infrastructure is now easily expandable, accommodating new services while maintaining rigorous security practices.
• Enhanced Availability: Kubernetes-based infrastructure ensures rapid issue resolution, enhancing the customer experience.
• Streamlined Workflows: DevOps adoption has streamlined processes, reducing errors and enhancing software reliability.
• Security and Compliance: Robust security practices protect sensitive data and ensure compliance, mitigating risks.
• Cost Optimization: Modernization and automation have lowered operational costs, improving financial sustainability.
• Team Collaboration: Cross-functional collaboration between development and operations teams has improved issue resolution and project delivery.

In summary, our approach has delivered agility, security, and efficiency, empowering the client to excel in a competitive landscape.

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