Quik! Leverages Managed Services, Works With AWS Premier Partner to Ensure Maximum IT Performance

Challenge

Quik! didn’t have the IT bandwidth to keep up with the latest features and developments from AWS, making it hard to ensure maximum IT performance and security.

Solution

ClearScale began providing managed services to Quik! and now ensures the company’s platform is available and secure at all times.

Benefits

Quik! has much more engineering capacity to develop and deliver great products using the best cloud solutions available from AWS.

AWS Services

AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon RDS

Executive Summary

Quik! provides digital form automation solutions to help companies design custom forms and collect accurate information from customers. With Quik!’s software, users can streamline critical workflows, improve employee satisfaction, and increase user satisfaction related to using online forms, all without adding backend operational complexity.

Because of Quik!’s rapid growth trajectory, the business needed to maintain top infrastructure performance. However, it was hard to do that while investing in new initiatives. Quik!’s leadership team decided to create additional capacity by working with ClearScale, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Consulting Partner that had agency to implement the latest features available from AWS. Through this partnership, Quik! was able to free its engineers up to focus on higher-level business goals rather on day-to-day IT administration.

The Challenge

Quik! supports many financial services companies, which means application security and uptime are paramount. Quik! simply can’t afford to lose or expose any sensitive information users submit through online forms, and downtime would be detrimental to the company’s clients.

Initially, Quik! managed and maintained its own servers, knowing that the organization had the IT skill needed to keep things running smoothly. However, as the company grew, engineers on staff became increasingly overwhelmed by the dual objectives of maintaining maximum infrastructure performance and bringing better form automation solutions to market.

Cloud providers like AWS are constantly releasing new features, updating security models, and enhancing cloud-native tools, making it hard for organizations like Quik! to justify doing the same in house. All this was happening while Quik! was preparing to store private information on behalf of customers, a big evolution in the company’s services.

Given the inevitable launch of this new capability, Quik! had to find a way to leverage the latest and greatest infrastructure management technologies out there without pulling team members away from other work. The company decided to bring in ClearScale, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner with 11 AWS competencies, to figure out the best path forward.

The ClearScale Solution

Quik!’s top priority for ClearScale was to build the cloud infrastructure component that would enable the company to store private data securely on behalf of platform users. ClearScale happily took this work off of Quik!’s plate, implementing AWS best practices and features along the way to increase application uptime and improve the overall disaster recovery system. Quik! can now failover in under an hour and hasn’t experienced an outage in more than a year.

Quik! also charged ClearScale with monitoring the company’s IT infrastructure and keeping up with AWS updates that could potentially affect Quik’s solutions. ClearScale now keeps close tabs on announcements from AWS and brings new ideas to the Quik! team around how to continue elevating IT performance. Consequently, Quik! never has to worry about missing a feature update or falling out of compliance with the latest regulatory mandates.

Today, Quik!’s fully updated cloud environment depends on numerous AWS services, including AWS Lambda scripts, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Kinesis. Furthermore, the forms automation provider is in the process of adopting containers and serverless technology to improve app performance and scalability, all with guidance from ClearScale.

"ClearScale truly feels like a part of our team. ClearScale’s engineers are there for us throughout the week and throughout the month. They’re part of our deployment process. They’re part of our security management efforts. They play an important role in our uptime management and monitoring. And they are critical in keeping our infrastructure moving forward."
Richard Walker
CEO, Quik!

The Benefits

Thanks to ClearScale’s AWS specialization and managed services, Quik! now takes full advantage of AWS solutions to ensure best-in-class recoverability, reliability, and security. As a result, Quik!’s engineers have more time and energy to think about how to innovate rather than how to maintain business continuity. Additionally, the company doesn’t have to hire new IT resources to accomplish its technical goals until absolutely necessary. ClearScale is available whenever Quik! needs assistance, allowing the company to run lean during its high-growth phase.

Quik!’s engineers also spend less time on DevOps and deployment processes, and the company can bring new offerings to market faster with less code. Plus, as Quik! deepens its relationship with AWS, the company’s cloud infrastructure only becomes more productive and cost-efficient.

Looking ahead, Quik! hopes to incorporate AI/ML capabilities into its offerings. Rather than build AI/ML applications from the ground up, Quik! plans to use managed services from AWS that integrate seamlessly with the rest of the company’s cloud ecosystem. Together, all these updates in conjunction with ClearScale’s ongoing support will empower Quik! to take its business to the next level.