Success Stories

Challenge

  • More than 100 dedicated customer servers worldwide.
  • Deploying new instance manually took more than two hours.
  • Errors happened frequently.

Solution

  • Automation of deployment with Cloudomation.
  • 8 hours of effort for developing automation script.

Result

  • Deploying new instance takes 5 minutes.
  • Error-free deployment.
  • Full audit trail of deployment.
  • Anyone can deploy new instances, not just System Administrators.
  • Parallel deployments possible.

Details

  1. Spin up AWS machine of specific type.
  2. Configure security groups.
  3. Configure network.
  4. Configure hard disk.
  5. Set up operating system.
  6. Install, update, and configure libraries.
  7. Download, set up and configure software product.
  8. Create account for customer on software product.
  9. Send notification email with login credentials to System Administrator, who does a final check and then forwards the credentials to the customer.

One System Administrator from Semantic Web Company and one Automation Specialist from Cloudomation sat together one afternoon. The System Administrator didn’t know Python. With support from our expert, he was able to develop the automation script himself. He now owns the process and can extend and adapt it on his own.

  • Extend the automated process for additional deployment options, e.g. on different environments and with different components.
  • Add steps before and after the process, e.g. a quick test after deployment finished, and direct send out of credentials to the customer. 
  • Automate roll-out of updates and other maintenance processes.

Swiss Software Company

Challenge

  • Over 300 employees need access to payslips in HR tool.
  • Payroll tool which produces payslips lacks functionality to deliver payslips directly to HR tool.
  • Existing integration layer lacks crucial functionality: cannot read pdf payslips to extract employee number and cannot upload pdf files to HR tool.

Solution

  • Payslip delivery automated with Cloudomation.
  • 12 hours of effort for developing automation script.

Result

  • Payslips are delivered automatically.
  • Delivery of correct payslip to each employee is ensured.
  • Fully documented audit trail of payslip delivery.
  • Notifications in place for invalid employee numbers and excess payslips.
  • Process can now be extended to automate more tasks in HR administration.

Details

  1. Payslips are uploaded in bulk to Cloudomation.
  2. Parse payslip pdf files to extract employee number.
  3. Access HR database to extract mapping of employee numbers between payslip tool and HR tool, which use different employee numbering systems.
  4. Check: Correct employee number in payslip pdf?
  5. Check: Each payslip can be assigned to an employee? (No excess payslips.)
  6. Create report containing all successful uploads and any issues that were encountered. If there are issues, all valid pdfs are still uploaded.
  7. Upload individual payslips to correct employee account in HR tool. Employees can now see and download their payslips in the HR tool. 

One Business Applications Manager from the customer and one Automation Specialist from Cloudomation met for two afternoons. With support from our expert, the Business Applications Manager developed the automation script himself. He now owns the process and can extend and adapt it on his own.

  • Streamlining automated process: parallel processing of pdfs, parallel creation of employee number mapping.
  • Direct automated download of payslip pdfs from source.
  • Dynamic update of employee number mapping for new or resigning employees.

Viennese SaaS Company

Challenge

  • Need to support several releases per day.
  • Poor performance of build process automation with build service of popular cloud provider.
  • Build failed frequently.
  • When working, build took 15 minutes.

Solution

  • Automate build process with Cloudomation.
  • 3 days of effort for developing automation script.

Result

  • Build completes much faster: 2-3 minutes.
  • Build completes reliably without errors.
  • Build automation script is a lot shorter and clearer. Before: 693 lines of code, now: 360 lines of code.
  • More granular control of build steps.
  • Extension of automated process is now possible.

Details

  1. Integration with git source control system: git commit triggers build.
  2. Source code extracted from git.
  3. Components are built and deployed in fixed order. This was much easier to do in Cloudomation than before. 
  4. Build completes in 2-3 minutes. Before it took 15 minutes.

One Automation Expert from Cloudomation developed the build automation flow script based on the previously used build script. In cooperation with the build master, our expert was able to improve elegance and performance of the build process significantly.

  • Further improve performance by only building components with committed changes, instead of always running a full build.
  • Extend build automation into full CI/CD pipeline.

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