Executive Summary

Winder.AI worked with its partner, Container Solutions, to deliver core components of the Weave Cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

• Kubernetes and Terraform implementations on Google Cloud Platform
• Delivered crucial billing components to track and bill for per-second usage
• Helped initiate, architect and deliver Weave Flux, a Git-Ops CI/CD enabler

Client

Weaveworks makes it fast and simple for developers and DevOps teams to build and operate powerful containerized applications. They minimize the complexity of operating workloads in Kubernetes by providing automated continuous delivery pipelines, observability and monitoring. Weaveworks also contributes to several open source projects, including Weave Scope, Weave Cortex and Weave Flux. It was one of the first members of the Cloud Native Computing Forum. Founded in 2014, the Company is backed by Google Ventures and Accel Partners. For more information, visit www.weave.works.

We wanted to accelerate our work on Weave Cloud, especially in our CICD project for kubernetes customers. Because of your help, Weaveworks has been able to bring Weave Cloud to market sooner. Your Cloud-Native expertise and your public speaking have improved our business. Time and money well spent. No gotchas!

Alexis Richardson - CEO - Weaveworks Ltd.

Problem

Weaveworks secured funding and needed to go-to-market quickly. They product was functional, but required the ability to detect, track and bill for usage. Also, to gain market traction they also needed to bolster their product portfolio.

Minimising the time it took to go to market was imperative. Weaveworks realised that there was a significant first-mover advantage. They required a company that was versatile and optimised for rapid deployments.

Winder.AI was chosen to perform this work because of our demonstrable data-oriented Cloud-Native expertise.

Solution

The requirement for flexibility and rapid development meant that Cloud-Native technologies were well suited to their problem. Using the Kubernetes orchestrator we developed a series of Docker-based Microservices to provide a range of user-centric functions. Foremost was that billing prototype that stored usage patterns in S3 and converted them to billable-time.

Alongside a team from Winder.AI’s partner, Container Solutions, we settled on a combination of services managed by Google Cloud Platform and custom Microservices. A benefit-driven approach was taken to ensure that both development time and run-time costs were optimised.

Throughout the process we embedded the clients engineers and product management team to transfer knowledge and experience. The entire implementation took approximately six months.

Results

Within only two months Weaveworks had a working billing system that they could integrate into their product. After a number of iterations they ended with a fully optimised system that work scale with their business.

They were immediately able to begin charging customers (whom were using a free service up to this point) and begin to profit. An infinite profit gain.

After the billing was in place, Winder.AI’s Cloud-Native expertise was subsequently requested to help architect and implement one of their core products, Flux. Flux enables teams to operate using a process called Git-Ops. Git-Ops adds a sorely needed process to Cloud-Native development by mandating that all operational and application software must be code. Flux automatically applies changes in git state to the production software, thus enabling an end-to-end continuous deployment.