Migration to GCP: from crossing fingers at every deploy to a scalable platform for TenderWolf

About TenderWolf

TenderWolf is an online platform that brings together all public tenders in Europe. It finds the perfect matches for businesses, uncovers hidden opportunities, and provides insights on how to win tenders.

What if your application’s user base would suddenly grow at a faster rate? Would the tech setup of your app be able to keep up? For scale-up TenderWolf the answer was no. Their deploys involved too much manual work, putting a limit on the amount of updates they could push out. We helped them migrate their setup to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Challenge: migrating while maintaining an uninterrupted service

Every tech scale-up runs into the limits of its application architecture at some point. It’s the moment you realize that small adaptations will no longer suffice.

Cloud Project Manager Roel Van Steenberghe: “At TenderWolf, a new deploy meant a lot of manual steps their developers had to go through. This put a limit on the amount of deploys they could carry out. Meaning it took too long to get new features to their users. 

Stress

“But all this manual work also caused stress. Even if their team did everything right, they still had to cross their fingers with every update. And when a problem occurred, it always took a while to troubleshoot. That’s not the situation you want to be in as a developer.”

TenderWolf realized they had to migrate their current set-up. But migrating to a new cloud environment is a big step. Especially at a scale-up, where every team member already has a lot of day-to day-challenges on their plate. Plus, a cloud migration requires specific expertise that is not core to a developer’s job.

On top of that, TenderWolf is running a data-intensive SaaS application. So it was key to maintain a seamless, uninterrupted service for their customers.

Challenges accepted!

Solution: migration to Google Cloud

In partnership with Google, we migrated this SaaS application to GCP in record time. 

We leveraged serverless architecture where possible, to reduce the risk of cyber security issues.

We automated all manual steps as much as possible. In the previous setup their developers had to deploy two applications at the same time to avoid bad data. Now deploys are carried out more automated and with less stress.

The GCP team provided support throughout the entire project, from start to finish.

Approach: a well though-out migration plan and a small, dedicated team

Migration plan

Roel: “It always starts with mapping out the initial setup. Together with TenderWolf, we talked through the ins and outs. Then we suggested optimizations for each part.”

“As a next step, we tailor a migration plan, covering even the smallest details. A plan we test out in a staging environment. This way we ensure that the actual migration goes as smoothly as possible.”

“During the migration, it’s our job to keep the balance between going full speed and taking our foot of the gas during those crucial steps.”

Small, dedicated team

“This is where we really made the difference. Scale-ups like TenderWolf work lean and mean. To match that way of working, we did three things.”

1. We kept the team to the absolute minimum. Two ACA colleagues took care of everything.
2. We picked out colleagues that combine tech expertise with good communication skills. 
3. We insisted that all meetings took place in person.

“This worked so well. Nothing got lost in translation. Not us versus them. No noise. Instead we had face-to-face meetings that were very hands on, and in which things got done. This was a prime example of working together.”