Introduction: Cutting Deployment Time by 83%
ThomasArts, a full-service marketing communications firm with over 200 employees, faced a growing challenge with time-consuming, manual deployments as their client base expanded.
Specializing in data-driven performance marketing, ThomasArts managed a complex, tech-enabled infrastructure for its clients. Deployment times for new customer setups averaged an hour, and updates took ten minutes each.
With scalability pressures mounting and a DevOps team reaching the limits of its capacity, ThomasArts needed a solution that would streamline deployments and reduce operational overhead.
GlueOps provided an automation-driven solution that slashed deployment time by 83%, saving the company time and avoiding massive investments in labor costs on the development team.
About ThomasArts
Founded in 2003, ThomasArts is a tech-enabled, full-service marketing communications firm headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with additional offices across the USA. Specializing in data-driven performance marketing, ThomasArts employs over 200 people and blends art and science to create powerful consumer experiences.
The Challenge: Time-Consuming, Manual Deployments and Scalability Issues
ThomasArts, tasked with performing daily updates across hundreds of web apps, faced a significant challenge in terms of time-consuming deployments. With initial customer deployments taking approximately an hour, and subsequent updates requiring around 10 minutes each, the process was demanding. This workflow involved manual configuration through the Amazon Web Services Console and was marked by limited automation, a lack of comprehensive record-keeping, and cumbersome rollback capabilities. Contributing to the complexity of these operations, the company employed a team of engineers, numbering up to 40, to manage and execute these tasks.
The Tipping Point: Managing Growth and DevOps-Development Mismatch
“Manual infrastructure became a bottleneck, and the DevOps Team couldn’t keep pace with the speed of developers and QA testing.”
With customer growth, ThomasArts encountered scalability challenges in managing deployments, pushing the limits of AWS Elastic Container Service and the AWS Application Load Balancers. Manual infrastructure became a bottleneck, and the DevOps Team couldn’t keep pace with the speed of developers and QA testing. ThomasArts needed a way to preview deployed applications without disrupting production environments and to test updates locally.
Solution Exploration: GlueOps vs Open-Source Alternatives
Before GlueOps, ThomasArts considered AWS Elastic Kubernetes Services and other open-source projects. Their requirements included developer self-service capabilities and full audit histories, especially for HIPAA-compliant customers. Developing such a platform in-house would require significant time and resources. GlueOps offered the ideal solution: a quick-to-deploy “DevOps-in-a-Box” platform, aligning with ThomasArts’ needs without the overhead of maintaining an in-house system, or experiencing vendor-lock in.
Technology Integration: Seamless Alignment with Existing Tech Stack
GlueOps seamlessly integrated with ThomasArts’ existing tools, including:
- Amazon Web Services
- AWS Elastic File Service (NFS)
- Relational Database Service (MySQL)
- GitHub Enterprise / GitHub Actions
- Elastic Container Registry
- WordPress, PHP
“As we were evaluating CD partners, we looked into an open-source alternative — but realized that it could take anywhere from 2-5 engineers and over $500k/year to maintain. GlueOps provided a faster, more cost-effective path to success” – Cooper Rose, Infrastructure Lead, ThomasArts
Key GlueOps Benefits
GlueOps delivered key benefits for ThomasArts, including:
- Automation of Deployments across 4+ Kubernetes Clusters and 400+ Pods
- 100% GitOps/IaaC (YAML) for all deployments
- Reusable pipeline templates/patterns
- Dedicated Customer Success team and support
Impact on Deployment Time & Effort
GlueOps reduced new customer deployment time by 83% and update time by 90%. New deployments now take 10-15 minutes (down from 60 minutes), and updates take just 1 minute. Additionally, GlueOps eliminated the need for 3+ FTE resources required for managing an open-source CD alternative, saving over $500k USD in costs.
“From an application development perspective, I’m not going to be the best, world-class Continuous Delivery expert. I trust GlueOps to be that for me so I can continue to focus on what we’re best at here at ThomasArts.” – Cooper Rose, Infrastructure Lead, ThomasArts