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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New Relic, an observability platform, was in need of a partner that could scale with them and ensure high-level data availability, scalability, and performance. The company's core data platform ingests data from around the world and makes it available in near real-time. The availability of this data is crucial for New Relic's customers, as they rely on it for important functions such as alerting and monitoring. If the data doesn't reach New Relic's systems, these functions won't trigger or appear, causing significant issues for their customers. New Relic was also looking to improve performance and was in search of a partner that could provide a service that was performant, scalable, and reliable.

Trade Me, New Zealand’s largest auction and classifieds site, faced a significant challenge during its digital transformation. The company, which has been in eCommerce since 1999, initially relied on New Zealand-based data centres in Auckland and Wellington. However, these centres required manual processes for configuration and maintenance, which were cumbersome and inefficient. The company decided to transition to the public cloud for scalability and automation benefits. However, this move presented its own set of challenges. The majority of Trade Me's customers are based in New Zealand, but the nearest Google Cloud servers were in Sydney, Australia, over 2,000km away. This distance posed potential issues for content delivery speed and customer experience. Additionally, the cloud migration raised new security and reliability challenges. For instance, if international connectivity was impacted by network failure or cyberattacks, the company could still serve domestic customer traffic with their New Zealand servers. However, this would not be possible with the cloud servers located in Australia.

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.

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.

LaunchDarkly, a pioneer in the field of Feature Management, was facing a challenge with its software development kit (SDK) in polling mode. The company was experiencing initialization rates of over one second in several locations worldwide, which was negatively impacting page-load times. This was due to the need to run logic at the origin for their flag management service, and some regions were simply too far away to be highly performant. This latency issue was a concern for clients with global customer bases, who were hesitant to use feature flags for certain use cases due to the potential for excessive latency. LaunchDarkly needed a solution that would bring their feature flagging service closer and faster to their customers, without compromising on security, performance, or resilience.

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.

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.

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.

SeenThis, a Stockholm-based ad streaming company, was facing a series of challenges. The company, which works with 80 of the top 100 advertisers in over 40 countries, was dealing with an average of 40 billion requests per month from over 1,000 customers. Their proprietary adaptive streaming technology was designed to remove the limitations of conventional ad serving technology, but they were struggling with their existing content delivery network (CDN) which couldn't provide the necessary configuration for delivering custom content based on different variables. Additionally, their previous logging and monitoring system began showing signs of aging by 2018, becoming slow and unreliable. The team struggled to manage the increasing number of requests required to serve its customers. Furthermore, when data transfer reduction emerged as a pressing environmental concern in 2020, SeenThis needed more detailed reporting capabilities to evidence their unique mix of performance and sustainability.

Spread Group, a global fashion and lifestyle provider, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its global scale and converting online clicks into physical products. The company, which operates three distinct brands, needed to weave delivery with security to ensure the smooth operation of its platform. With over 6.17 billion average monthly requests, finding a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to supercharge delivery was a top priority. Additionally, Spread Group needed a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF) that could work in harmony with its constantly evolving platform. The company had a good, internally developed security monitoring and observability infrastructure, but it was not viable long-term. A flexible WAF that could run in blocking mode was needed to provide more time to modernize vulnerable legacy components.

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.

MadeiraMadeira, an online marketplace specializing in home products and furniture, faced the challenge of improving online access for shoppers and providing reliable uptime. The company needed to expand its capacity to handle surges in website usage, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when online traffic volume increased significantly. The company also faced difficulties in handling large volumes of images for its 2.3 million products. The process of compressing, resizing, and editing multiple images was time-consuming and inefficient. Additionally, MadeiraMadeira was looking to implement a multiple cloud strategy and tackle the offline market with a digital mindset.

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.

JW Player, a leading platform for video delivery and intelligence, was facing a significant challenge in managing its rapidly increasing traffic. The company, which serves some of the biggest names in media, has seen its traffic grow exponentially as video strategy becomes central to business strategy. The company was dealing with a 900% increase in requests per second, scaling from 4,000 requests per second in 2019 to 40,000 requests per second in 2021. This growth was driven by both market expansion and pandemic-driven demand. The challenge was to maintain high availability and fast time-to-first-frame (TTFF), which are critical metrics for end-user engagement. Additionally, JW Player was grappling with rising origin costs and the need to simplify their tech stack.

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.

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.

GIPHY, a platform that serves billions of stickers, clips, and GIFs daily to its global user base, faced the challenge of delivering content seamlessly, reliably, and cost-effectively. The platform's content enhances conversations across various social media and communication tools, including iMessage, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. The challenge was to ensure a speedy, lag-free search experience for GIPHY end users. Additionally, GIPHY needed to protect its platform from malicious traffic and reduce traffic to origins for cost savings. The company also required data logs to drive analytics and future content development, and needed to maintain agility in the development of platform enhancements.

api.video, a European-based company that provides video encoding, delivery, and hosting services, faced significant challenges in scaling its video delivery via its Content Delivery Network (CDN). The company was using a niche CDN provider, CDNetworks, for its two data centers in Canada and Europe. However, the provider was unable to meet the growing demands of api.video. The company faced issues with poor cache performance under full load, especially during live streaming events. This issue was so severe that it restricted product access and hindered the company's scaling efforts. Additionally, the CDN provider only made logs accessible once per day, which made quick mitigation of any abuse impossible. The company also faced issues with opaque routing within its old CDN, which was suboptimal and offered no control. Furthermore, api.video wanted to leverage future features that the previous CDN provider would not allow due to lacking features or mandated policies. These features included supporting custom domains, domain referrer restrictions, the ability to control request log data, and support for the Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) framework and built-in optimizations for video use cases.