ACCELERATE
TO THE CLOUD
Solliance enabled Profisee to deploy a SaaS cloud platform with HashiCorp Terraform in 100 days.
The Players
Profisee
The Visionary
An established leader in master data management with cutting edge software and strategic vision.
Solliance
The Rocketfuel
Experts, and only elite experts, with deep expertise in cloud architecture, DevOps, and security.
HashiCorp
The Engine
The leader in multi-cloud infrastructure automation software offering industrial grade IaC that delivers innovation.
Solution
To accelerate their transition to a modern SaaS company, Profisee found a partner in Solliance and the right technology in HashiCorp Terraform.
Impact
From the first line of code to live customers in 100 days. In February 2022, Profisee launched the first-to-market, client-ready SaaS MDM solution and the internal capability to manage the deployment going forward.
Full Story
FROM 1 YEAR TO 100 DAYS
In 2021, Profisee had an ambitious goal–to rapidly develop and launch the industry’s first fully-managed SaaS MDM platform to give clients an easy to implement, reliable and secure SaaS experience.
To get to SaaS, Profisee was committed to “doing it right” and willing to invest to go fast. They sought a partner that could provide guidance and expertise to make their strategic vision a reality. “Profisee has excellent architects that can do hard stuff, but we were looking for a partner to help accelerate our learning and avoid pitfalls along the way,” says Profisee CTO Eric Melcher.
“It’s not every day that a successful software company wants to fundamentally change not only their business, but quite frankly, change an industry,” says Dan Patrick, GM of Solliance’s Infrastructure and DevOps Practice. “When Profisee came to us, there wasn’t an MDM SaaS provider in the industry—it didn’t exist.”
With Solliance and HashiCorp we went from writing that first line of code to actually having an environment up and running for a customer in a hundred days. This project was really the culmination of three parties coming together to meet a challenge.
A GROWING NEED AND STRATEGIC VISION
Master data management serves a critical need, enabling companies to align and clean enterprise data for more accurate analysis and better business decisions. As more enterprise workloads move to the cloud, the challenge of connecting and managing data spread across dozens of different applications across multiple cloud platforms has only gotten harder.
But while companies have been transitioning to the cloud for years, the MDM industry’s own cloud transition lagged because initially there was little demand from customers for a cloud-based solution. “Due to data gravity, MDM solutions tend to be deployed where the majority of the data lives. Until recently, that was,” says Melcher. “But about a year and a half ago, the industry reached an inflection point where customers have a majority of their data in the cloud and ‘cloud-first’ mandates for MDM caught up with other parts of IT.”
Knowing this disruption was coming drove Profisee to invest early in a cloud-native architecture. Determined to avoid short cuts, they began their cloud journey three years ago. The first step was to re-architect the platform into microservices and package it as a stateless, containerized service that can be orchestrated by Kubernetes. This effort would transform their core product from the ground up, ensuring the user experience would remain the same regardless of whether it was deployed on-premises or in the cloud.
Profisee released this new Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) architecture in the summer of 2020, becoming the first MDM solution on the market with a fully containerized platform that runs natively in their customers’ cloud. They were now primed for SaaS, but there was still a chasm to cross to launch a fully-managed offering and become a secure custodian of their customers’ data. To bridge that gap, Profisee would need to build out cloud infrastructures to enable their platform to run efficiently and securely. They reached out to a trusted partner, Solliance, to help guide the way.
A partner like Solliance is extraordinarily valuable in helping ensure organizations like Profisee implement HashiCorp tools and successfully adopt the cloud.
THE RIGHT PARTNER
Profisee began working with Solliance, years earlier, as part of their investments in containers and Kubernetes. Impressed by their unique approach and talent, Profisee saw an opportunity to leverage Solliance’s deep expertise in DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) for the next phase of their cloud migration.
“Solliance has people who have done it before and are at the leading edge of these technologies,” says Melcher. “They aren’t like other consultancies we’ve engaged with in the past—they really focus on teaching and mentoring. Instead of coming in and doing the work for us, they work with us.”
“Our global network of experts average more than 20 years of experience—we’ve seen technology revolutions happen in front of our eyes—we’ve seen what’s failed and what works,” says Dan Patrick. “Solliance’s focus is on advising and implementation, and then leaving our clients in a place where they have the skills and processes in place to operate on their own.”
With Solliance on board, the effort to rapidly launch the industry’s first fully-enabled SaaS offering began with a six week Architecture Design Session (ADS). The session gave Solliance a deep dive on master data management and Profisee’s products. “It was an essential step in the process,” says Patrick. “We spent time really hearing and capturing their goals and concerns around security, access, flexibility and speed—the types of things that would be critical for their clients.” The ADS also introduced Profisee to IaC and DevOps concepts. “We had no prior experience with IaC,” says Melcher. “Not only did we learn the technology, but Solliance passed on methodologies and best practices around how to layer IaC and do it right the first time.”
The ADS also introduced Profisee to IaC and DevOps concepts. “We had no real-life experience with IaC,” says Melcher. “Not only did we learn the technology, but Solliance passed on methodologies and best practices around how to layer IaC and do it right the first time.”
After the design session, dedicated members from Solliance and Profisee formed a temporary blended team to lead the development and implementation of the SaaS DevOps environment. In just eight, two-week sprints, the team focused on building out IaC that would allow Profisee to effectively spin up their cloud data center programmatically.
Solliance is proud to be the rocket fuel that helped accelerate Profisee to a SaaS solution that fast. Profisee’s strategic vision and exceptional engineering team, together with HashiCorp’s powerful tools and Solliance’s deep expertise made it happen.
THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY
“Solliance has been using HashiCorp Terraform to build mission critical systems for many years. Once we clearly understood what Profisee was looking for, we saw how HashiCorp’s tools could meet their business needs,” says Patrick. “We recommended Terraform Cloud Business because its industrial grade IaC with significant advantages over open source versions or DIY approaches.”
“By using Terraform, you have access to a bunch of modules that have best of breed practices already predefined. This allows companies like Profisee to feel comfortable with what they are putting in a production environment,” says HashiCorp Field CTO Ray Ploski. “Terraform allows organizations to take care of a lot of the challenges typically seen with automation and self-service. Governance, risk compliance and cost controls can all be put into place in a way that allows an organization to go fast without breaking the bank or exposing security holes.”
Another significant benefit for Profisee is Terraform’s cloud agnostic, approachable and modular language. Profisee is a Microsoft centric company—Azure is the only place their SaaS product runs today. But when they do make it available on other cloud platforms, their existing Terraform code is 95 percent there—they can launch with just a few tweaks instead of wholesale redevelopment.
“If you deploy and manage a SaaS solution manually, it’s hard to be sure that everything is right every time—you end up with these massive checklists, but with Terraform it’s all baked into the code,” says Melcher. Today, when Profisee acquires a new customer, they can have test, and production tenants in about ten minutes, ready to use. Likewise for future upgrades or launching Profisee SaaS into new global regions—it can all be done programmatically and completed in days not weeks.
“Partners like Solliance allow HashiCorp to extend its reach incredibly,” says Ploski. “We can’t always help every single organization get these new disciplines and practices in place. Solliance is extraordinarily valuable in helping ensure organizations like Profisee implement our tools and successfully adopt the cloud.” “With Solliance and HashiCorp we went from writing that first line of code to actually having an environment up and running for a customer in about a hundred days,” says Melcher. “This project was really the culmination of three parties coming together to meet a challenge.”
“With Solliance and HashiCorp we went from writing that first line of code to actually having an environment up and running for a customer in about a hundred days,” says Melcher. “This project was really the culmination of three parties coming together to meet a challenge.”
Profisee went to great lengths to make sure they did cloud migration right.
They put themselves in a spot where they can deploy on demand and have a secure environment that they can maintain and grow to meet customer demands very, very quickly.
A FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS
In February 2022, Profisee successfully launched the industry’s first fully-enabled MDM-as-a-service. Their customers can now leverage a true SaaS experience, or maintain complete flexibility in any cloud, on-premise or via a hybrid model. Profisee’s investment in multi-tenant architectures enable economies of scale that are less expensive to maintain and require fewer infrastructure resources to run, which means greater scalability and lower cost for their customers.
“Profisee went to great lengths to make sure they did cloud migration right,” says Ploski. “They put themselves in a spot where they can deploy on demand and have a secure environment that they can maintain and grow to meet customer demands very, very quickly.”
Beyond their successful SaaS launch, Profisee also has the internal capability to fully manage the deployment going forward. “We didn’t need to hire a team to come work for months and months to operationalize—we are effectively launched as far as those skill sets go,” says Melcher. “This was a great example of when to bring in outside help and invest versus trying to figure everything out in the school of hard knocks.”
“Our approach to help build and grow client capability is very much like a craftsman-style mentorship—Profisee had never used Terraform and now they are fully managing a Terraform-based SaaS tool,” says Patrick. “Solliance is proud to be the rocket fuel that helped accelerate Profisee to a SaaS solution that fast. Profisee’s strategic vision and exceptional engineering team, together with HashiCorp’s powerful tools and Solliance’s deep expertise made it happen.”