"We're saving about 40% and we're able to deploy all of our services through Codefresh."

"Everything I've come to expect from a CI/CD tool comes out of the box, and the interfaces for it are very easy to customize."

Crux achieves 40% cost savings compared to their previous solution.

Crux Informatics provides a data platform that helps their customers tap the power of big data. The key to keeping their platform effective and competitive is having one consistent tool that lets developers deploy microservices quickly and reliably. But the cost of their previous solution forced them to manually deploy many services. Developers now deploy 100% of their code with Codefresh Argo CD—at 40% less cost than their previous solution.

The technological backdrop

Crux provides a cloud-based integration platform that enables their customers to easily access and integrate external data from any source, transform it to meet their needs, and deliver it anywhere in the organization: analytics platforms, cloud applications, data warehouses, and data lakes. In addition to the platform itself, Crux offers prebuilt integrations with more than 265 data suppliers.

The platform is built on cloud-native technologies including Kubernetes and Helm, and it runs on major cloud service providers like Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. The company needs to make it easy for developers, so they can focus on delivering code. To achieve this, they require a tool that insulates developers from the details of deployment infrastructure and Kubernetes.

The challenge

Crux was using another vendor for services deployment, but the pricing model was cost prohibitive when applied to Crux’s modern microservices architecture. As a result, they were forced to manually deploy many services. That increased complexity and delayed getting competitive features to the market.

Crux needs to assure consistent deployments that are auditable via a single tool. They need the flexibility to run in any environment. They need to be able to customize the solution to their way of operating. And they need a pricing model that fits their microservices architecture and gives them a consistent deployment model and tools for all of their code.

Ryan Haggerty, Crux Head of Infrastructure, had worked with several CI/CD solutions. He says most are not designed for cloud-native deployments, or they lock the user into specific approaches. Ryan looked at open-source alternatives, but the employee time required to manage them would be counterproductive in their fast-moving environment.

We’re probably saving about 40% in cost compared to our former tool. And we’re able to deploy 100% of our services through Codefresh.

The solution

Crux runs Argo CD from Codefresh in Google Cloud Platform. To make it easy for developers to use, the team built pipelines to handle the cases that exist in their environment. Developers can select the right deployment pipeline without needing to have a line-by-line understanding of the YAML that defines it.

Crux is System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type 2 compliant. Codefresh fits easily into the group-based, least-privilege access control paradigm they have instituted to assure security. And Codefresh gives them complete visibility into every action that is taken on the platform.

Codefresh just works. Everything I’ve come to expect from a CI/CD tool comes out of the box, and the interfaces for it are very easy to customize.

Unlike other solutions they considered, Codefresh lets Crux work the way they want to work. The company has customized the Codefresh Argo CD solution to do exactly what they want in their environment. They like that they can run Codefresh in the cloud and also in their own infrastructure to test internal services and apply computing power to stress test software. And Crux’s Joe Grabenstein reports Codefresh support was right there with them on their journey. “The support we received when we were first standing up our kind of infrastructure and automation around it was very responsive. Codefresh was very willing to work with us on the vision we had of what we wanted to achieve.”

Codefresh has an intuitive UI that our developers can use to deploy the version of their software to a specific environment at the click of a button.

The result

It’s working. At Crux, developers deploy all services in one consistent way via one consistent tool. Ryan says, “Codefresh provides the right level of abstraction for our developers. It lets our engineers focus on building software rather than managing deployment pipelines.” This has enabled the company to roll out new microservices quickly to create new solutions for their clients.

It’s saving money. The Codefresh pricing approach supports modern engineering practices and enables the microservices architecture Crux implements. Joe reports, “We’re probably saving about 40% in cost compared to our former tool. And we’re able to deploy 100% of our services through Codefresh.”

It’s making life easier. Ryan says, “I don’t have to worry about breaking changes, managing plugins, or trying to schedule updates. The platform just takes all of that headache away.”