Problem

The management overhead from running Kubernetes clusters across AWS and Azure motivated Delio to look for a solution that would automate tasks around resource scaling to ensure their solutions are high-performing and deliver a great user experience. Saving the time of their engineers was a priority for Delio.

Solution

By implementing CAST AI, Delio enjoys the benefits of a fully automated process that balances cost and performance, buying back their engineer time. As mentioned by Delio’s Head of Technology Operations, Alex Le Peltier, there should be little doubt for any company considering CAST AI.

Transforming finance with modern fintech solutions

Delio is a UK-based company that delivers private markets’ technology to the world’s most recognized financial institutions. The fintech startup provides configurable solutions that help companies to connect their clients with private investment opportunities quickly, transparently, and compliantly.

To build high-performing and resilient products that meet the current market demands, Delio turned to cloud-native solutions. The company uses managed Kubernetes services from Amazon EKS and Microsoft Azure AKS.

We aim to automate as many processes as possible, using tools like Helm and Terraform. When managing our Kubernetes clusters became too much of a headache, I knew that this was a good candidate for automation.

Alex Le Peltier, Head of Technology Operations

Running Kubernetes clusters across multiple clouds soon became challenging

Cost, management, and performance have always been important to Delio as the company scaled rapidly. But it was the management overhead coming from running clusters across AWS and Azure that motivated the team to look for a solution.

“We were running on T type EC2 instances and scaling them a lot during our operation. At the beginning, we used AWS autoscalers and then added Azure into the mix. Keeping an eye on it all became difficult. Are we using the right instances for the right job? Do we have to create more node groups? Is something not working because we’ve run out of space? Answering all of these questions and applying fixes became a time-consuming issue for our team,” said Alex Le Peltier.

This is when Delio turned to CAST AI

“Sure, we could build a solution that could do the job for us. But then we’d have to look after it. I’m personally a big fan of SaaS platforms and when our CTO mentioned CAST AI, I jumped on the opportunity. We didn’t need to look far – the platform fit perfectly with what we were looking for. It felt like a natural choice for Delio,” said Alex Le Peltier.

The team started by connecting some of their clusters to CAST AI, instantly saw the automation benefits and sped through the implementation process with our engineers’ help.

I think any company similar to Delio – one that’s growing from the startup to scale-up phase – can benefit a lot from CAST AI. Managing multiple clusters and growth for new clients while keeping costs as low as possible is tricky. CAST AI fits that use case nicely. I can see it working in pretty much any organization that uses Kubernetes.

Alex Le Peltier, Head of Technology Operations

“The thing that has truly sold me on CAST AI was the support process. The CAST AI team has gone above and beyond to help us fix the issues we encountered early on in our implementation process. We’ve had situations in the past where we’ve been given support by suppliers – but with CAST AI, we felt that they really own the issues and do everything they can to fix it,” said Alex Le Peltier.

Automated cluster optimization was exactly what Delio needed to boost its performance

“The results we got from implementing CAST AI were brilliant right from the start. It’s all about the fact that we don’t need to worry about scaling our clusters anymore. Peace of mind is definitely one of the biggest benefits of the platform. Especially if you go multi cloud as the differences between managing EKS and AKS clusters are significant. CAST AI takes that complexity away,” said Alex Le Peltier.

“Before implementing CAST AI, bumping up an instance size was a bit of a pain. Now I can decide to add another instance or increase its size, and the platform does it automatically for me. We used to have four or five people involved in managing this, now they’re free to do other stuff, which is great,” said Alex Le Peltier.

Next steps

Delio managed to reduce its cloud bill for resources connected to CAST AI significantly. But this is just the beginning. The team plans to optimize more resources and get the full benefits from autonomous cloud cost optimization.

Delio is also currently working on implementing CAST AI’s cluster scheduling feature. This will enable the team to stop their development environments overnight and drive further cost savings.

I think we probably still have a bit to go to get to true cost optimization. We’re generally cautious when rolling out new software, but we’re definitely going to connect more accounts to CAST AI within the next six months. Judging by how it’s been going so far, I expect to see significant cost savings.

Alex Le Peltier, Head of Technology Operations

The company plans to expand its use of CAST AI and its new features developed in line with user feedback.

“Pretty much every time I log into CAST AI, there’s a new functionality – and often one that we’ve asked for, which is really great to see. It’s clear that the team is investing a lot in the platform. And I’m hoping that we can have a long partnership with CAST AI. That’s always been the key thing for us – we’re not looking to just buy a product off the shelf and be done with it. We’re looking to work and grow with CAST AI as we go along,” said Alex Le Peltier.