3 DAY TURNAROUND

PLATFORM.SH DEMO

TO 3 YEAR CONTRACT!

platform.sh

INTRODUCTION

Three days was all it took for this customer; from

seeing the Platform.sh demonstration and

undertaking a speedy technical evaluation, to

negotiating and signing a 3 year contract.

This is the background to Slimtrader’s prior

experiences with 4 mainstream Drupal hosting

vendors, and why they chose to move to

Platform.sh so quickly.

CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL

URL

www.slimtrader.com

EARLIER HOSTING EXPERIENCES

Initially Slimtrader was self-hosted on [AXX] but

it proved to be more of a distraction from the

main business than we wanted. As such the

decision to move to a hosted platform was made.

In evaluating the available platforms we chose

[Pxxxxxxx] because of the ease of use and the

lowest cost, compared to that of [Axxxxx] which

bundled in a high cost services contract on top.

This worked out well but provided some

shortcomings inherent in the system. First of all,

our business is located in Africa, and partially in

European Union. Hosting in [Rxxxxxxxx] Chicago

added some lag to the system, due to the fact

that we had to get across the Atlantic Ocean and

back for every single page request. Although we

utilized the CDN for what we could, we’re an

eCommerce site so most of the traffic couldn’t

be satisfied from cache due to the dynamic

nature of the checkout process! In addition, due

to our large scale files and databases, migrating

data between various environments was an

expensive and laboured process. While the

system worked much better than our own

[AWS] stack and provided better uptime, we

we’re still keen to find a better solution.

In the fall of 2014 we entered into discussions with [Axxxxx] regarding their EU based Enterprise hosting,

which would effectively move us back into our preferred region. We attempted to setup a testing environment

for the Mali site to see how this would work, but they were not able to provision this test environment in their

EU datacenter. Consequently, our testing environments remained in the Virginia datacenter which didn't prove

to be beneficial for us whatsoever.

WHY WE CHOSE PLATFORM.SH SO QUICKLY

During this whole period we had been keeping track of Platform.sh progress through launch and surprisingly

quick maturity, knowing that if their promise lived up to reality, this 2nd generation PaaS would mesh very well

with Slimtrader’s requirements. After seeing the demonstration at Drupalcon Bogota (February 2015), we

decided that we would quickly move the Mali test environments to Platform, and if our performance

requirements were met then we would immediately initiate a move to Platform.sh.

The decision criteria came down to a few key items, as follows:

Cost - Coming in at a lower annual charge than both [Pxxxxxxx] and [Axxxxx] is always important,

whether you’re a budget conscious start-up in the middle of a funding round, or an established

corporate.

Location - Being back in the Irish datacenter is what we have been wanting since leaving it to move to

[Pxxxxxxx]! Having our data located back in EU1 dramatically reduces the response time for each and

every search request.

Multi-site Architecture - Initially we did not have an issue with [Pxxxxxxx], but our business model

evolved to hosting sites on behalf of partners. This meant we had to route all their traffic back to a

single domain. But with the Platform.sh multi-site capabilities, we are now able to split these back out

and make the customer experience much better.

Advanced fast multi-development environments - Having full control over the git flow for projects

greatly helps us as we can now rapidly create/hotfix if needed, and split out our sprints into

environments which are so easy to manage. Whilst we won't be using all the power of the Platform.sh

provisioning to start with, it gives a larger runway for what we can do in the future to streamline rollout

of code.

In short, Platform.sh came in at a time when Slimtrader was actively looking to make a switch, provided there

was a better option! Being in the right place at the right time, with the right feature set, pricing, and hands on

technical support, the decision was an easy one for Slimtrader to make.

Three days was all it took for this customer; from

seeing the Platform.sh demonstration and

undertaking a speedy technical evaluation, to

negotiating and signing a 3 year contract.

This is the background to Slimtrader’s prior

experiences with 4 mainstream Drupal hosting

vendors, and why they chose to move to

Platform.sh so quickly.

Platform.sh is a fully automated Git-driven development and hosting PaaS (Platform as a Service) for PHP web applications that manages not only the entire production infrastructure, but also any number of development and staging environments. It extends a branch-merge workflow to infrastructure so that every branch can be tested as if it were in production, and scales for the largest sites. Using Platform.sh increases development velocity and virtually eliminates DevOps.

EARLIER HOSTING EXPERIENCES

Initially Slimtrader was self-hosted on [AXX] but

it proved to be more of a distraction from the

main business than we wanted. As such the

decision to move to a hosted platform was made.

In evaluating the available platforms we chose

[Pxxxxxxx] because of the ease of use and the

lowest cost, compared to that of [Axxxxx] which

bundled in a high cost services contract on top.

This worked out well but provided some

shortcomings inherent in the system. First of all,

our business is located in Africa, and partially in

European Union. Hosting in [Rxxxxxxxx] Chicago

added some lag to the system, due to the fact

that we had to get across the Atlantic Ocean and

back for every single page request. Although we

utilized the CDN for what we could, we’re an

eCommerce site so most of the traffic couldn’t

be satisfied from cache due to the dynamic

nature of the checkout process! In addition, due

to our large scale files and databases, migrating

data between various environments was an

expensive and laboured process. While the

system worked much better than our own

[AWS] stack and provided better uptime, we

we’re still keen to find a better solution.

In the fall of 2014 we entered into discussions with [Axxxxx] regarding their EU based Enterprise hosting,

which would effectively move us back into our preferred region. We attempted to setup a testing environment

for the Mali site to see how this would work, but they were not able to provision this test environment in their

EU datacenter. Consequently, our testing environments remained in the Virginia datacenter which didn't prove

to be beneficial for us whatsoever.

WHY WE CHOSE PLATFORM.SH SO QUICKLY

During this whole period we had been keeping track of Platform.sh progress through launch and surprisingly

quick maturity, knowing that if their promise lived up to reality, this 2nd generation PaaS would mesh very well

with Slimtrader’s requirements. After seeing the demonstration at Drupalcon Bogota (February 2015), we

decided that we would quickly move the Mali test environments to Platform, and if our performance

requirements were met then we would immediately initiate a move to Platform.sh.

The decision criteria came down to a few key items, as follows:

Cost - Coming in at a lower annual charge than both [Pxxxxxxx] and [Axxxxx] is always important,

whether you’re a budget conscious start-up in the middle of a funding round, or an established

corporate.

Location - Being back in the Irish datacenter is what we have been wanting since leaving it to move to

[Pxxxxxxx]! Having our data located back in EU1 dramatically reduces the response time for each and

every search request.

Multi-site Architecture - Initially we did not have an issue with [Pxxxxxxx], but our business model

evolved to hosting sites on behalf of partners. This meant we had to route all their traffic back to a

single domain. But with the Platform.sh multi-site capabilities, we are now able to split these back out

and make the customer experience much better.

Advanced fast multi-development environments - Having full control over the git flow for projects

greatly helps us as we can now rapidly create/hotfix if needed, and split out our sprints into

environments which are so easy to manage. Whilst we won't be using all the power of the Platform.sh

provisioning to start with, it gives a larger runway for what we can do in the future to streamline rollout

of code.

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In short, Platform.sh came in at a time when Slimtrader was actively looking to make a switch, provided there

was a better option! Being in the right place at the right time, with the right feature set, pricing, and hands on

technical support, the decision was an easy one for Slimtrader to make.