To meet the needs of growing infrastructure and operate at scale, ConfigureID wanted to find a cloud solutions partner who could increase the reliability of their cloud infrastructure while reducing complexity.
Collaborating with Flugel enabled ConfigureID to understand their cloud infrastructure better and improve the reliability and scalability of their systems through automation and process improvements while reducing maintenance costs and resources.
As a pioneer in product personalization services, ConfigureID helps premium enterprise brands customize products to drive user engagement. The ConfigureID platform provides photorealistic 3D visualization, text personalization, and user-generated content. Naturally, the company’s platform infrastructure must be reliable to handle various types of customization.
Moreover, ConfigureID was dealing with large amounts of global traffic. “Our big e-commerce brands generate a ton of traffic, and we need to be able to handle that traffic, like spikes in traffic or Black Friday,” said Andrew Guldman, CEO of ConfigureID. “So our infrastructure has to be very robust and scalable. We also need to be able to operate all around the world, including mainland China.”
To serve the growing global user base, ConfigureID built back-end services using AWS, Alibaba, Kubernetes, CircleCI, and on-premise servers. But as the users increased, ConfigureID needed a more dedicated technology partner with DevOps expertise who could manage, automate and optimize the cloud infrastructure.
As ConfigureID did not have the in-house expertise to find solutions to increasing complexity, it was becoming a hurdle to smooth expansion of services. “We didn’t have a good enough internal understanding of the technologies to confidently maintain them ourselves,” said Andrew Guldman.
So, increasing reliability and reducing complexity with the help of an expert DevOps partner was the company’s highest business priority.
When ConfigureID started working with Flugel, they already had adopted Kubernetes, and they had the necessary worldwide infrastructure in production. However, they needed more personalized guidance to improve configurations and get more out of their investments. Flugel team members collaborated with ConfigureID to understand their existing infrastructure and provide solutions for compliance, security, cost optimization, cloud automation, CI/CD productivity, observability, availability, and scalability.
Flugel and ConfigureID built a partnership based on collaboration, flexibility, and dedicated time. According to Andrew Guldman, “Since we moved to work with the Flugel, the nearshoring model makes it so that it’s easier for us to be able to afford the time we need. We’ve also really enjoyed Flugel’s slightly more relaxed way of working, completely professional but flexible. Developers at Flugel attend our planning meetings. We have regular standups. We talk about what we’re doing. We collaborate really well. They’re able to take the time to help us understand what we’re doing and collaborate with us to help us plan what we should be doing. So it feels like much more of a partnership. It really feels like they are members of our team.”
ConfigureID was using AWS for both compute and storage. They were having difficulty with Kubernetes on AWS. They had to build Kubernetes clusters on their own due to the problems with Amazon EKS. But ConfigureID was dealing with a mountain of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to keep those self-provisioned Kubernetes clusters running. Flugel helped ConfigureID understand the stack and migrate Kubernetes resources to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to create a more centralized, cleaner stack. Flugel also helped ConfigureID re-factor their CircleCI configurations using Orbs, which dramatically reduced the code around CircleCI workflows. Furthermore, ConfigureID had a messy situation in China due to unused cloud resources and experimental deployment. Flugel cleaned up and simplified the infrastructure to make it easier to understand and maintain and added more redundancy to increase reliability.
With Flugel’s help, ConfigureID has a cleaner, simpler, and more reliable infrastructure. If ConfigureID tried to build an internal team, it would take time, money, and resources to acquire the required expertise. The Flugel team already had the DevOps knowledge and experience due to their work with clients across various industries and regions.
Flugel provided domain experts to ConfigureID on-demand. As a result, ConfigureID improved its infrastructure faster at a lower cost while gaining valuable insights into the technologies in use. Furthermore, reduced complexity of infrastructure maintenance led to more cost savings and productivity.
The collaboration between ConfigureID and Flugel is ongoing. As a next step, they plan to work on further simplifying the infrastructure using Terraform and Serverless technology and look into more cost optimization options.
ConfigureID is the leading product personalization platform for premium enterprise brands like Louis Vuitton, Ray-Ban, Oakley, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Yankee Candle, Fender, and Franklin Sports. The company helps brands develop product customization and personalization experiences for users. Headquartered in Oakland, California, ConfigureID has been assisting brands for 15 years.
Are you struggling with your cloud infrastructure? Flugel can help. We have expertise in AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, Linux, Jenkins, Docker, Python, Ruby, Chef, Saltstack, Puppet, and Ansible. Contact Flugel to find out more.
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