IGS Case Study - Using DevCycle in a Cloud-Based Microservices Architecture

About IGS

Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) is a pioneering company in the vertical farming industry, specializing in the development of advanced vertical farming towers. Their new and innovative approaches optimize agricultural productivity by using vertical space and technology to maximize crop yield and quality.

IGS initially considered using flagd but quickly encountered limitations with these options. They realized that they needed a user-friendly UI to facilitate the hand-off of feature flags to non-technical team members. This was just the first of many reasons that led them to choose DevCycle.

Our Story | Intelligent Growth Solutions, Vertical Farming

In 2013, IGS brought together decades of farming and engineering experience to create an agritech business with a vision to revolutionise vertical farming.

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Team Anatomy & Tech Stack

IGS has a diverse team structure encompassing various roles, including:

• Software Developers
• Data Team
• Product Managers
• Site Reliability Engineers

Overall, the team size approaches 40 members.

Tech Stack:

• DotNet-focused microservices deployed into Kubernetes
• Angular with TypeScript
• Python for Data Analytics

Development Practices:

• The software team practices continuous deployment.
• The data team and other teams practice continuous delivery, meaning they have to manually deploy to production.

All teams leverage Kubernetes for their deployments.

Challenges Faced

Before adopting DevCycle, IGS faced several significant challenges:

1. Inefficient and Costly Testing Environments: IGS maintained seven duplicate environments of their production system, costing approximately $45,000 per month. This setup was necessary to manually test and verify code changes.
2. Targeting and Audiences: The traditional method of feature releases was heavy, expensive, time-consuming, which created anxieties for their engineering and product teams.
3. Risky and Inflexible Code Deployments: Without a proper feature flagging system, the team struggled to deploy changes safely and efficiently, leading to disruptions in their continuous delivery pipeline.

Solution

IGS chose DevCycle as their feature and release management tool because of these key features:

1. Feature Flags: Enabled seamless and controlled release of features, allowing IGS to deploy changes without affecting all users simultaneously. This was particularly useful for their front-end team and upcoming back-end migrations.
2. Advanced Targeting & Rollouts: DevCycle's advanced targeting, audiences and rollouts allowed IGS to segment and target their users more effectively, leading to improved personalization and customization of experiences.
3. Self-Targeting and Audiences: The ability to use account IDs instead of personal email addresses for targeting added an extra layer of flexibility and compliance with privacy standards.
4. Simplified Testing Environments and Reduced Financial Costs: By implementing DevCycle, IGS could eliminate the need for multiple manual environments, reducing their costs from $45,000 down to $4,000 per month.

Implementation Process

IGS was migrating off of an in-house solution, making the switch to DevCycle a simple one. The migration involved:

• Evaluating Alternatives: IGS evaluated other market solutions and found DevCycle to be the most suitable, thanks to its team-friendly pricing that allows unlimited seats, enabling all of their developers to create flags.
• Implementation: The transition from in-house to DevCycle was straightforward, with DevCycle integrating well into their existing Kubernetes-based microservices architecture.
• Adoption: The platform team spearheaded the adoption of feature flags, gradually shifting the mindset of the engineering teams towards leveraging this tool for better deployment practices.

Outcomes and Benefits

1. Cost Reduction: IGS saw over $40,000 in savings after using DevCycle to reduce the number of environments.
2. Enhanced Productivity: Engineers now focus more on development rather than managing complex testing environments.
3. Improved Release Confidence: Product managers and engineers gained confidence in releasing features without the fear of impacting the entire system. The ability to control feature visibility provided a safety net for incremental and safe rollouts.
4. Increased Flexibility: The front-end and back-end teams could now implement and test changes more efficiently, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and rapid iteration.

Future Plans

The migration and implementation have been so successful that IGS plans to expand the use of feature flags to more back-end processes, further optimizing their deployment strategies and enhancing their product offerings.

Conclusion

IGS’s adoption of DevCycle has transformed their development and deployment processes, leading to significant financial savings, improved productivity, and greater confidence in their feature release cycles. The successful integration of DevCycle demonstrates its value in supporting innovative technology companies like IGS, enabling them to focus on their core mission while maintaining robust and flexible dev practices.