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Filestack's Scalability and Security Enhancement with Fastly
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Middleware & Microservices
Applicable Industries
- Cement
- National Security & Defense
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Tamper Detection
The Challenge
Filestack, a low code content API platform, was facing challenges in scaling their rapidly growing file management service. They were in need of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that could support their expanding services in a reliable, cost-effective, and fast manner. Their service involved image transformation, which resulted in multiple versions of the same file, and they needed a way to invalidate these versions quickly. They also required customization at the edge, a large number of powerful and strategically located Points of Presence (POPs), and the ability to handle large file sizes. Additionally, Filestack was struggling with the management of Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates, a task that was distracting their team from product development. They were also considering dropping a premium feature, CNAME, due to the burden of managing a certificate and private key for each customer.
About The Customer
Filestack is a low code content API platform that enables developers to build automated content processing and analysis faster, with higher quality, and at less cost. Their scalable infrastructure powers billions of uploads, transformations, and downloads every month, providing unparalleled performance to users anywhere in the world. By eliminating the need to build and maintain a content ingestion stack, Filestack helps companies save time and money, allowing them to focus their resources on their own apps or software. Filestack's services include file uploads, file transformation, and delivery. They also offer a premium feature, CNAME, which allows their customers to format their Filestack URLs with a custom domain.
The Solution
Filestack partnered with Fastly, a CDN provider, to scale their business and enhance security. Fastly's solutions enabled Filestack to scale their data transfer by nearly 20x. Fastly's purging and invalidation feature allowed Filestack to invalidate file versions in seconds, compared to the previous 15 minutes. Fastly's custom Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) provided the customization that Filestack needed, and their configuration versioning offered instant, one-click rollbacks. Fastly's high-density POPs ensured ultra-fast delivery for a seamless user experience. Fastly also helped Filestack manage large file sizes. Fastly's TLS management relieved Filestack from the cumbersome task of managing TLS certificates. It also allowed Filestack to scale their CNAME feature to hundreds of certificates. Filestack is also planning to implement Fastly's Compute@Edge for high performance, serverless computing at the edge, and Fastly's next-generation web application firewall (WAF) for enhanced security.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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