Canoe Intelligence Revamps Cloud Production Infrastructure and Reduces Costs by 25%

Challenge

Canoe Intelligence didn’t have enough internal engineering capacity to execute a production infrastructure migration within AWS.

Solution

ClearScale helped Canoe design a new production infrastructure and complete the migration without any hiccups.

Benefits

Within a few weeks, Canoe saw its infrastructure costs come down by 25%, and the company’s DevOps engineers had more time on their hands to focus on higher value activities.

AWS Services

AWS Control Tower

Executive Summary

Canoe Intelligence is a developer of an AI-powered technology solution that automates manual processes tied to alternative investments. The company’s core product helps institutional investors, wealth managers, and others in the finance industry optimize workflows around important documents. People depend on Canoe to help them manage immense amounts of unstructured data so that they can better understand portfolio performance.

Canoe Intelligence recently decided to reevaluate its production environment within the AWS cloud. After asking AWS for advice, the company tapped ClearScale to help execute a migration within AWS to a new production environment. As a result of the migration, Canoe was able to lower its cloud infrastructure expenses, increase DevOps capacity, and set the stage for future growth.

The Challenge

Canoe Intelligence has grown fast since its founding in 2013. And as a technology-forward, cloud-native SaaS business, Canoe already had cloud computing expertise. In 2022, however, the company’s leadership team decided it was time to revisit its cloud architecture. Canoe wanted to make sure it had the right foundation for future growth and innovation. There was likely potential to consolidate certain components and revisit current best practices.

The problem was that Canoe’s internal technology team was at capacity supporting customers and dealing with day-to-day responsibilities. There weren’t enough resources available to execute an infrastructure migration to better architecture within AWS that would result in superior performance. Canoe asked its AWS representative for advice and was advised to contact ClearScale given the company’s vast experience completing these types of projects.

"Our partnership with ClearScale has been extremely successful. Not only were we able to design, but we are also able to execute, go live, and realize all those benefits that we put on the table in front of this engagement - all while significantly reducing our cloud costs."
Vishal Saksena
Chief Technology Officer, Canoe Intelligence

The ClearScale Solution

Rather than immediately jump to a technical solution, ClearScale first asked Canoe Intelligence what the company hoped to accomplish. Then, ClearScale conducted a comprehensive audit of Canoe’s existing cloud infrastructure. Based on the results of the audit, ClearScale designed new architecture for Canoe and then followed through on the migration.

Along the way, ClearScale kept thorough documentation, implemented AWS best practices, and educated Canoe’s team on how to enforce the latest cloud standards. ClearScale also designed a new AWS Landing Zone using AWS Control Tower.

Even though Canoe had ample cloud experience and expertise, the client was able to trust ClearScale with standing up a new development environment, staging environment, and all the necessary tooling. From there, Canoe was able to complete the migration quickly.

The Benefits

Since going live on its new architecture, Canoe Intelligence’s AWS costs have come down 25%. The company’s internal DevOps engineers also have more capacity to tackle higher-value work and deploy new features rapidly. Additionally, developers can maintain and manage their own cloud infrastructure easily.

Furthermore, Canoe can now spin new infrastructure up and down more efficiently, thanks to Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) automation. Any new environments are consistent, enabling DevOps and development engineers to focus more on new client features. Plus, Canoe can take greater advantage of AWS capabilities that will be beneficial as the company expands into the EU region. The company’s priorities moving forward involve serving customers well in multiple EU countries, each with their own unique data regulations, and boosting its cybersecurity posture.