Thierry Hue, Co-Founder & CEO, DynamicIQ, shares an Application Modeller case study.
When you’re a technology service provider trusted by over 150 of the world’s top-tier banks and brokerage firms, application reliability is a critical objective.
In this case study, we’re looking at Ullink, a global provider of multi-asset trading technology and infrastructure. The company operates over 450 trading platforms and connects to more than a hundred of the world’s leading liquidity and exchange venues.
Unsurprisingly, managing such a large technology estate can create a number of complex challenges.
This responsibility falls to Ullink’s operational department, which consists of three experienced teams working closely together on the company’s product portfolio.
The teams follow a familiar DevOps framework – development, implementation and production. As with any competent DevOps outfit, each team works on a number of projects at any one time.
In the case where DynamicIQ’s Application Modeller was used, the project involved over 7000 configuration files comprising 300,000 lines of configuration.
When failure is not an option
As with any financial services technology, Ullink’s applications must not fail.
“One of our critical trading platforms connects 30 clients to 20 markets, so it’s imperative configuration changes are accurately and efficiently managed. One mistake can have massive implications.” Guillaume Laurent, a production engineer at Ullink, explained the risks involved.
Laurent turned to Application Modeller from DynamicIQ. When asked why, he explained Ullink’s decision was partly due to the tool’s ability to integrate with the company’s internal distribution tools and also the solution could reliably automate a large number of configuration files.
Another reason, as Laurent put it, was ease-of-use: “We love how Application Modeller can be used without any specialist scripting knowledge. It has dramatically improved how our teams work together.”
Ullink conducted an appropriate level of due diligence on the solution and were satisfied with the results. Laurent and his colleagues proceeded to use the solution for the above client project. In total, there were 14 application environments, 65 servers and 7000 distinct configuration files.
It used to be that Ullink’s configuration process was managed manually. Now the company has a solution where a change only has to be made once as the tool applies the change to every instance.
Real results
Ullink claims to have seen many benefits, including the reduction of mistakes associated with human error, the creation of a more predictable configuration pipeline, and fewer production delays.
Time savings have been one of the most tangible outcomes from automating application configuration.
“In the case of the project, we made 85 release changes in 18 months. There were zero failures. The process now takes just 15 minutes, compared to two days. That’s a time saving of 98%. This lets our team focus more on value-added projects for our clients, rather than repetitive configuration tasks,” said Edouard Ryst, Chief Customer Officer at Ullink.
Ullink is just one example of how automating application configuration can lead to a dramatic improvement in employee productivity, business efficiency and compliance. It’s also an interesting example of a business implementing processes to really support the delivery of an agile development process and, in turn, maximise the value of DevOps.
Edited for web by Cecilia Rehn.
