Interview with Cyril Janssens, CTO of Easybourse for over 12 years.
My role is both organizational and technical, since I manage all the players in the company’s information system. This goes from the micro-computing to the development through the infrastructure. I am also in charge of the whole DevOps methodology, and in particular its implementation with Iguana Solutions for the production.
What were your issues when you decided to work with Iguana Solutions?
We’ve adopted containerization (Docker) since 2017 for our internal systems. We wanted to push this type of system to our production. Iguana Solutions’ predecessor technologies did not allow it as is. The technology we chose for containerization is Kubernetes. Iguana Solutions’ predecessor was ISO 27001 certified.
Following a 6-month RFP period, we chose Iguana Solutions to host and manage our production information system, including the Kubernetes cluster. We were looking for a provider that was ISO 27001 certified, which is a guarantee of quality and security for an information system, and that was able to host a Kubernetes cluster as we have today in production.
Why did you choose Iguana Solutions to support you?
There are not many players capable of providing a Kubernetes cluster on machines that we own, with physical servers. This requires a lot of internal skills and knowledge.
During our call for tenders, we met talented people at Iguana Solutions, with whom we were able to have in-depth technical discussions. We were won over by their vision and their ability to deploy the solution on production in the finance sector.
What solution and device were deployed with Iguana Solutions?
We deployed a complete Kubernetes cluster with Iguana Solutions, a container orchestration system. They deployed the infrastructure, Kubernetes itself, and also managed the backup on a multi-site basis since we have three physical connection sites on which our servers and backups are distributed. Iguana Solutions also took care of the data storage, which is a very tricky part since it is the weakest component in the IS in terms of availability, security and performance.
On the EasyBourse side, we managed the continuous integration and development (CI/CD) which we carried through to the production level. Iguana Solutions supported us in this deployment which takes time and requires many adjustments.
Finally, we had to manage the transition and migrate all the data and systems from the old solution to the new one. In general, this is a transition that is done gradually, but in the context of such a major technological migration, we had no choice but to make the switch overnight. This brings a lot of constraints, but it worked.
What did this partnership bring you?
With our previous partner, our ability to grow had come to a halt. We had reached the end of the line in terms of optimization on the old infrastructure: welcoming new customers was done at the expense of the performance of the whole system.
Opting for Iguana Solutions allowed us to multiply our overall performance by at least 4.