In 2023, Kong’s frustration with its self-hosted distribution solution, Pulp, had reached a breaking point. For some time, the open-source solution, which met Kong’s needs in its early years, had been under strain. As growth made Kong responsible for an increasing share of the internet’s traffic, the criticality of Kong’s distribution ramped up as well. Seamless delivery of its software updates, upgrades, and patches became essential for its clients to maintain their functionality online.
According to Kong’s SVP of Engineering, Saju Pillai, the consequences of a Kong distribution failure could be considerable. “A two-day delay on our side in distributing a patch could translate into millions of dollars lost for an unfortunate customer,” he explains. “So the impact would be unusually high.”
The number of product versions Kong was supporting had grown, the number of assets requiring distribution was increasing, distribution of those assets was becoming more complex, and the tooling and team responsible for it had reached their limits. Challenges and frustrations included:
- the cost and effort for three engineers to maintain their own instance of Pulp;
- frequent CI/CD disruptions;
- repeated complaints from customers; and
- impacts on project agility.
Kong’s VP of Engineering explains why Kong chose Cloudsmith and describes the impact of the switch.
Cloudsmith Awes Engineers
By switching to Cloudsmith, Kong now enjoys specialized, fully-managed, high-volume software distribution on a global scale. “When you think about the amount of energy and time and money that companies spend solving the software distribution problem in-house," says Saju, "I don't think that can be properly justified, anymore, when Cloudsmith exists.”
With Cloudsmith, Kong has transformed its software distribution workflow and strengthened its operational efficiency and resilience. Notable improvements include:
- six-figure savings;
- continuous shipping with zero hiccups;
- agile delivery of custom solutions for design-partner clients;
- increased customer satisfaction; and
- infinite auto-scaling to support growth.
“Once we got the bulk of our assets moved from Pulp into Cloudsmith, we saw an instant drop in escalations,” Saju explains. “The complaints have literally gone to zero.
“Cloudsmith is key to our CI/CD and DevOps stack now,” he adds. “It should be a tool in the DevOps toolkit for everyone.”
For the whole story on why Kong chose Cloudsmith and how life has improved there since the switch, view the full Kong case study.
