Improving Sleep & Increasing Deployment Velocity 7.5x

Find out how Harness helped Zepto's CTO sleep better at night while increasing deployment velocity 7.5x.

Published on
6/24/21

About

Zepto’s revolutionary payment solutions are redefining the way businesses approach, make and receive payments. They’re not just improving the current payment infrastructure – they’re leveling the paying field. Zepto’s Open Banking & real-time payments ecosystem facilitates faster payments, better collections and disbursements, lower transaction costs, and superior payment security. Their highly consumable API manages complex payment flows and is fully scalable with your business, delivering a future-proofed payment automation solution. Whether you’re looking for improved business efficiencies, a more secure and reliable payment system, or a superior customer experience, Zepto has the payment solution to power your success.

Servants of Slow and Unreliable Deployments

Zepto was tired of subjecting itself to slow and unreliable software deployments. No one felt this pain more than CTO Trevor Wistaff. Trevor helped build the original scripts that allowed Zepto to deploy to ElasticBeanstalk. He subsequently was one of the few engineering resources that could maintain the pipeline scripts and trigger deployments. No one else wanted to own these scripts because they were fragile and prone to breaking. 

“We had to use our most costly business resources to deploy software and maintain scripts. Our engineers were scared to touch our deployment scripts because they didn’t want to be the ones to break something.” -

Trevor Wistaff | CTO | Zepto

Deployments were a dangerous affair for Zepto, so they limited deployments to twice a week. Each deployment took roughly 20 minutes, and it was unknown whether the deployment would succeed or fail. Given the nature of Zepto’s business, failure could mean catastrophe for its customers.

“We deal with millions of transactions a day, so going down is not an option.”

Trevor Wistaff | CTO | Zepto

Deployment risk was beginning to keep Trevor up at night, so he decided to find a better deployment strategy. Trevor wanted a solution that could support containerized applications, while also requiring minimal maintenance. They immediately threw Spinnaker out as an option. 

Breaking Free and Performing Stress-Free Deployments

Now that Zepto uses Harness to deploy software, Trevor sleeps easier at night. 

“Harness removed the inherent risk associated with deployments. On a scale of 1 to 10, I used to be a 6 nervous in terms of deployment. Now I’m a 1.”

Trevor Wistaff | CTO | Zepto

This reduction in deployment risk means developers are free to deploy on their own. This has increased Zepto’s deployment velocity to 3 times per day, a 7.5x increase from twice a week. Deployments also take less than a minute to complete, which is a 94% reduction in deployment effort. 

Harness also adds a layer of abstraction on top of Kubernetes, meaning that developers don’t have to be a Kubernetes expert to take advantage of the platform. Some developers are able to onboard and deploy using Harness within their first two days on the job. 

“Harness was the enabler that allowed us to leverage Kubernetes.”

Trevor Wistaff | CTO | Zepto

But beyond the clear technological advancements, Zepto also gained a trusted partner in Harness. 

“The people at Harness were a major selling point. They’re just good people. They do what they say and say what they do.”

Trevor Wistaff | CTO | Zepto

Find out how you can work with the best team in the business and remove the stress of software deployments today.

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