Serverless comes with its own set of challenges. Cold start times* — the several hundred milliseconds of latency required to execute an inactive serverless function — cause delays in the user experience that too often have a major impact on conversion rates. Add in limited observability and resource contention, as well as emerging security concerns about side-channel attacks, and it becomes clear why organizations hesitate to move business-critical workloads to serverless. What’s needed is a different approach to serverless that’s highly performant, developer friendly, and secure.

Ticketmaster, a global leader in event ticket sales, faced a significant challenge in modernizing their tech stack to improve user experience and stay ahead of the competition. With over 40 years in the business and having acquired numerous ticketing businesses, Ticketmaster had 30-40 different ticketing platforms, each with its unique inventory and customer base. The company had been using a legacy Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider for over 15 years, which had become increasingly challenging to manage due to its complexity and the undocumented rules built over the years. The cost of delivery on their CDN provider was expanding, and the black-box nature of their legacy CDN required many professional services hours to configure, update, and manage. This made it difficult for the team to implement changes quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, the company had to support the needs of 16 different product teams within Ticketmaster, making the situation even more complex.

Andrew Barba, an engineer and iOS developer, was faced with the challenge of running Swift, a programming language developed by Apple and the open-source community, on servers. Despite the popularity of Swift in the Apple ecosystem, there was no clear pathway for its use on servers. The Swift community had been laying the groundwork for this, including adding support for compiling code to WebAssembly, but there was little traction. Barba found the development experience of writing JavaScript on Node.js to be lacking compared to building native applications in Swift. He also found the process of getting Swift packages into AWS to be too complex, requiring extensive knowledge about cloud architecture and Docker files.

RealtyNinja, a real estate website builder, was facing challenges in meeting the growing expectations of its customers. As the business expanded, customers demanded faster websites that could keep their end users engaged. With the availability of MLS information, home buyers were not willing to wait for a page to load and often did not give slow sites a second chance. RealtyNinja also had to ensure that the information on its websites was always up-to-date. Their agreements with real estate boards required that out-of-date information should not last for more than 24 hours on any of its websites. Failure to comply could result in fines or lawsuits. Additionally, RealtyNinja had to manage the transformation of 80+ million images per month in real-time, catering to an array of screen sizes and display types.

La Redoute, a French fashion and home furnishings brand with a history of 181 years, was facing a significant challenge in 2014. Despite their long-standing reputation and success, they were struggling to keep up with the rapid shift towards digital commerce. Their traditional business model, which relied heavily on brick-and-mortar stores and printed catalogs, was no longer delivering the desired results. The company recognized the need to transition from their catalog-based model and physical storefronts to a digital platform. The challenge was not just about moving online, but also about maintaining the quality of their product images, which were crucial for their success. With approximately 10 million product images that needed to be replicated and resized across various channels and devices, the task was daunting and time-consuming.

Chick-fil-A, a leading restaurant chain in the United States, was seeking a robust and flexible web application security solution to safeguard the key assets of their digital transformation strategy. These assets included consumer-facing mobile and web applications that were instrumental in enhancing customer satisfaction and driving revenue growth. The existing legacy Web Application Firewall (WAF) that relied on pattern matching rulesets was inadequate in a development lifecycle where distributed software design and deployments were commonplace. The challenge was to find a future-ready WAF that could be easily installed across distributed architecture and effectively prevent account takeover (ATO) attempts and other attacks on public-facing apps in production.

Gannett | USA TODAY Network, the largest local-to-national digital media organization in the U.S., faced the challenge of delivering news quickly and smoothly across the globe. The company required a network that could handle high traffic levels, especially during breaking news, without disruptions for end users. They also needed to be able to scale globally, integrate next-gen innovations effortlessly, and support a developer-first mindset. The company's business happens worldwide, necessitating a network that can deliver as efficiently in Europe or Asia as it does in the U.S. Furthermore, they needed to take advantage of cutting-edge technology and support developers in getting new products and enhancements into production safely and swiftly.

Yottaa, a SaaS platform designed to optimize enterprise online retail websites, was seeking to deliver faster, better online shopping experiences for brands like Carter’s, Ralph Lauren, Lenovo, and GNC. The platform needed to manage the loading of 3rd party services, improve the way websites serve dynamic content, and collect a massive amount of performance, traffic, and site error data. However, Yottaa faced challenges in maintaining target metrics during peak times, preventing bottlenecks and errors, and providing consistent, smooth experiences regardless of traffic demands. Additionally, Yottaa needed to monitor its own infrastructure performance, including request throughput, bandwidth, and cache hit ratio, to better control costs and leverage partner services.

Superology, a Croatian tech company, was faced with the challenge of developing a social network for betting fans that could handle high performance, scalability, observability, and authentication. The company, which was acquired by Superbet group in 2017, had to accommodate millions of users demanding and consuming sports content constantly. The nature of live sports meant that users had zero tolerance for time lags and blackouts. The company also had to manage a large volume of content requests, which could peak at 15,000 per second. Additionally, Superology needed to monitor all services and act instantly in case of trouble, especially when introducing new features.

Chef, a leading automation software company, was facing a significant challenge in securing their DevOps practices and business operations. The engineering and operations teams at Chef were seeking a security solution that could provide greater visibility into the changing vulnerabilities and attack vectors across their applications. They needed a security solution that could enable them to identify and solve security issues in the same way they were already able to respond to operational issues, without negatively impacting performance. The challenge was to find a security solution that could scale with their DevOps practices and business needs, and help their customers be more secure.

Remitly, an online remittance service, was faced with the challenge of securing its proprietary global transfer network. The company needed a security solution that could meet PCI requirements and protect customers' sensitive transactions through its mobile application. The solution had to be capable of defending against new and emerging attack types without impacting performance. Remitly also had to deal with irregular traffic patterns, such as a sudden spike in account transfers from a small network segment on the Pacific coastline of South America. The company needed to determine in real time whether such traffic indicated an attack or valid requests. A traditional web application firewall (WAF) would not be able to distinguish this traffic, potentially leading to customer frustration if the IP was blacklisted.

OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open-source global map built by 6.4 million volunteers, faced significant challenges with their content delivery. Their data, used worldwide for various applications, is updated frequently, sometimes every minute, and a new complete export of their data is published weekly. However, their initial solution of building their own content delivery network (CDN) with donated resources was fraught with difficulties. They struggled to obtain servers in certain regions, and map editors often complained about slow loading times. Their ability to detect and correct server issues was minimal. In 2019, a traffic spike caused by the London Marathon's new app led to the meltdown of OSM's custom-built CDN, forcing them to reroute traffic and seek a different solution.

Hoodoo Digital, an agency specializing in delivering customer experiences using the Adobe Experience Cloud, faced a challenge in providing its clients with both content security and performance at scale. One of Hoodoo's clients, Pacific Dental Services, which manages 1,200 websites for dental offices, was not delivering all of its websites through HTTPS. The sites were hosted on an Apache server, and a few dozen certificates were causing performance issues. Furthermore, Google was about to change its algorithm to downgrade insecure sites. Pacific Dental Services needed to add TLS certificates across its portfolio as soon as possible, and also automatically generate certificates for every new website going forward. It was crucial that all sites maintained a high standard of performance.

PayPal, a global payment solutions giant with a user base of 300 million, faced challenges in maintaining security, optimal performance, and scalability. The company's ambitious vision to democratize financial services and empower people and businesses globally required a strong focus on security and fast, reliable user experiences. However, the company faced everyday threats such as website spying, DDoS attacks, and exploits, which necessitated robust security measures. Additionally, with a global footprint as expansive as PayPal’s, latency was a significant challenge. Data sometimes had to make long round trips, which could negatively impact user experience and repeat business.

Mediaset España, Spain’s audiovisual market leader, faced a significant challenge in making on-demand video available to its users across all platforms. The company's architecture, which placed the origin of videos in the public cloud (Azure), was complex and only worked with a single content delivery network (CDN). Mediaset España wanted to adopt a multi-CDN infrastructure to ensure quality service and enhanced availability for premium users and customers. However, the company needed a CDN that could easily integrate with its existing architecture and adapt to a preexisting ecosystem without requiring major development steps. Additionally, the cost of extracting data from the public cloud (egress) was a concern due to the volume of data generated by Mediaset España.

LeanTaaS, a provider of software solutions for healthcare systems, faced a significant challenge in securing their cloud-based APIs and web services. As a company serving leading hospitals and healthcare providers across the country, LeanTaaS needed a security solution that could provide real-time visibility and defense. Their lean approach, coupled with data analytics, aimed to create more efficient medical facilities, but the security of their cloud-based services was paramount. Additionally, they needed to meet the stringent HIPAA compliance requirements, which further complicated the situation. The challenge was to find a solution that could not only secure their web services and APIs but also ensure compliance with healthcare regulations.

Magnolia, a leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP) provider, faced a significant challenge in meeting the evolving needs of its enterprise customers. For over 20 years, Magnolia had been providing its application for customers to host on-premises and later as a managed service in the cloud. However, customers increasingly demanded a platform that simplified infrastructure deployments and experience delivery, including an embedded Content Delivery Network (CDN) to handle domain certificates, DDoS mitigation, scaling, stability, caching, and Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). The challenge was to find a CDN vendor that could meet these demands and integrate seamlessly with Magnolia's service model. The CDN needed to be API-first for easy integrations and configurations, handle 100 terabytes (TB) of traffic per month, and complement Magnolia's business model. Additionally, Magnolia aimed to provide a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that would satisfy an increasingly security-conscious clientele, particularly in sectors like banking and finance.

Dunelm, one of the largest home furnishings and accessory retailers in the U.K., was facing challenges with its ecommerce platform. The company, which offers hundreds of thousands of products online and operates over 170 brick-and-mortar superstores, was looking to support a major digital transformation initiative. The goal was to increase speed for their shoppers across web and mobile storefronts, enhance security, deliver site updates faster at scale, and augment an infrastructure-as-code strategy. In early 2017, Dunelm undertook a major re-platforming initiative that would allow engineering teams to leverage the many advantages of cloud technologies. However, during the new stack rollout, a major incident occurred which affected their Google Product Listings Advertisements, impacting the team’s ability to sell products on their new platform.

Bell Media, Canada's leading content creation company, was facing a significant challenge in managing traffic spikes and maintaining the quality of their content delivery. The company delivers media to over 22 million customer connections within more than 8 million Canadian households. As their customer base continued to expand, they began to experience very high traffic spikes for video delivery. These traffic spikes posed a risk of causing slowdowns and server failures, which could compromise the quality of the content delivered to Bell Media customers. The video delivery pipeline team, responsible for sourcing, transcoding, and delivering content to all Canadians, needed a solution that could handle their growing capacity needs and ensure a flawless experience for customers under any circumstances.

Litium, a scalable ecommerce platform, was seeking to enhance its customer package by adding a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The company's goal was to provide its B2B and B2C clients with a fast, flexible, and scalable sales platform that could support their growth. However, the legacy CDN providers were not a good fit for Litium's needs as they were cumbersome and time-consuming to manage and service. Furthermore, Litium's customers, who are based around the world, needed a solution that could maintain backend operations in Europe while allowing sales in the US and other parts of the world without any degradation in response time.

LoveHolidays, one of the largest and fastest-growing travel brands in the UK, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its website performance to meet the high demand. With over a million users each month and an average of 4,000 requests every second in 2019, the company needed to ensure a seamless user experience to maintain and increase its conversion rates. The company's previous architecture was composed of various legacy systems, which added an unnecessary level of instability and lack of scalability. Furthermore, the company needed to optimize its hotel images, a critical factor in engaging potential customers and boosting conversions. Slow-loading images not only deterred potential customers but also negatively impacted the site's SEO performance.

Edgemesh, a web acceleration company, was faced with the challenge of delivering fast and reliable websites for their customers, particularly in the ecommerce sector. Their customers required instantaneous response times and high-quality immersive experiences for their shoppers. Edgemesh was responding to 4-5 billion resource-level requests daily and needed a solution that could handle this volume while improving performance. The company's primary focus was on performance, and they needed a solution that could meet this need effectively. The challenge was to find a solution that could execute code at the edge near their customers at blazingly fast speeds, enabling highly personalized and interactive user experiences without any noticeable latency.

Linktree, an Australian SaaS startup, had created a unique niche for itself as a 'link as a service' provider. With over 16 million global users, the platform was experiencing a steady growth in views, reaching close to 1 billion views per month. However, as consumer behaviors shifted, Linktree faced the challenge of maintaining uptime, managing traffic, and delivering profiles with low latency on a global scale. The company was also preparing for a potential traffic spike, as it aimed to support 4 million new users in 3 months. Linktree's small team had big growth goals, and they needed a solution that could improve their security posture and scale seamlessly. They had initially used another vendor's WAF, but it was not comprehensive enough for their needs.

amazee.io, an open-source application delivery solution provider, was facing challenges in maintaining the seamless operation of its ZeroOps platform. The company's customer base was expanding, and with it, the need for more robust security measures and certificate management. High-profile customers were using the Lagoon platform for business-critical applications, which necessitated stringent security demands. The company was also dealing with issues of false positives and alert fatigue, which were frequent irritants. Traditional Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) were proving to be inadequate, often blocking legitimate traffic or requiring constant tuning and re-tuning. Furthermore, one of amazee.io's major customers had an active bug bounty, which led to constant scanning of the site and required a significant upscaling of the customer's database cluster to handle the load.

Nine, Australia’s largest locally owned media company, faced significant challenges in the fast-paced media industry. With a diverse set of technological needs and engineering challenges, Nine needed to ensure time-sensitive media delivery to over 12 million readers across its platforms. The speed of media delivery directly impacts audience reach, conversion, and ad revenue. Therefore, Nine needed to ensure up-to-date content delivery, requiring a powerful, programmable, secure Content Delivery Network (CDN) and innovative IT partnerships. The company also faced a 50% spike in users and subscribers since the start of 2020, necessitating the ability to scale at pace. Furthermore, Nine recognized the need for a modern approach to CDN, with access to source code management for agile publishing and rapid change cycles.

OFX, an international financial transfer platform based in Sydney, Australia, processes over $22 billion annually through its web application. After a three-year migration to the cloud, OFX sought to increase visibility and protection against Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) attacks and authentication abuse in its cloud-first microservices infrastructure. Partners interact with the OFX platform via APIs that communicate with internal microservices. Richard Lane, Head of Digital Security at OFX, wanted to ensure that their microservices weren't implicitly trusting others and sought a product that would provide visibility. He was looking for a solution that was easy to install, use, and could effectively block malicious traffic automatically, including logins, without causing production incidents.

Split, a global provider of a feature delivery and experimentation platform, was seeking a scalable and reliable edge cloud network to deliver feature flags to its customers. The company's customers use these feature flags to introduce and roll back changes swiftly, thereby reducing the median time to recovery. However, Split was facing challenges with conventional Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), experiencing purge times ranging from 10 to 30 minutes, which was unacceptable for their business model. Furthermore, as a company with a worldwide customer base, Split needed to maintain high uptimes in every location, a task that was proving difficult due to the potential for human error and the challenges of performance at scale.

One Medical, a membership-based primary care practice, was faced with the challenge of securing customer data in line with their cloud-first strategy. The healthcare industry is particularly vulnerable to identity theft, and organizations like One Medical have to manage a multitude of electronic medical records. The company takes the security and confidentiality of their customers’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII) seriously, adhering to industry best practices in software development, testing, and internal and external security practices. However, they needed a security solution that could scale with their cloud-first strategy, improve their overall security posture, and remain compliant with HIPAA. They also faced issues with false positives in their environment, which could potentially block doctors from performing critical functions such as submitting prescriptions. Other solutions they evaluated were difficult to deploy into their cloud-first technology stack and caused false positives.

Skillsoft, a leading EdTech company, faced a significant challenge when its traffic surged by 400% in a short span of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company, which serves content to 45 million learners in over 160 countries, saw its traffic double between February and March 2020, and then double again from March to April. This sudden spike in demand had the potential to seriously degrade user experience, which is a key factor in EdTech success. Additionally, Skillsoft was also experiencing growth due to global expansion, particularly in India where the EdTech market is expected to quadruple over the next five years. Already, 20% of Skillsoft's traffic was coming from India, and this number was growing.

RVU, a leading tech company in the UK, owns several market comparison sites and apps. The company has grown through strategic acquisitions, which has led to inconsistencies in tech stacks as each acquired business comes with its own back-end architecture, integrations, and more. This inconsistency posed a challenge to RVU as it sought to provide a secure, single layer of consistency across all its brands. Furthermore, as users have grown increasingly reliant on price-comparison tools, their expectations around security and privacy have also increased. RVU needed a solution that would not only standardize operations across all brands but also fortify all of its brands equally in terms of security and privacy.