Global Database

Intelligence at your fingertips

case study 8 minutes

Global Database (further GDB) is one of the business intelligence market leaders, that provides company details and other information such as email addresses financial, credit risks and due diligence checks, digital insights and a lot more. The company delivers its provisionings via an online platform that enables its users to filter down data according to various criteria, enrich their own data and use perishable up-to-date information via the platform’s Application Programming Interface.

Faced Challenges

GDB faced one of the most common challenges: the global issue of horizontal scaling. In only 3 years, the company has grown from a tiny startup to a fierce competitor within the business information markets, challenging industry giants such as Duedil or DiscoverOrg.

Real-time Data Bottlenecks

As their customer base grew, serving real-time data to a quite demanding audience became less of a luxury and more of a demand: “We approached EBS with a data processing dilemma. Since GDB handles hundreds of gigabytes, processing bottlenecks were starting to cripple our service and the only solution we could think of for the long term was increasing server resources. This has been a painful quick-fix because, in some instances, additional resources were simply not enough. We reached a point where we’ve been spending crazy amounts of money, just to keep the platform up. Service Latency has also been an issue and we understood that a simple patch would not make the cut.” – states Mr. Nicolae Buldumac, Managing Director, at Global Database.

Operating on a live service

At the other end, EBS Integrator’s leading system engineers were facing another dilemma: the one of building on top a live system while reducing outage incidents to a minimum. “Given our customer’s circumstances, we knew: time is of the essence. The entire development cycle could take over 6 months and by the time the new version of GDB was done, their stakeholders might have reached for a better service to their competition” – states Mr. Ion Aremescu, the Lead System Engineer for GDB project.

Back to the blueprints

To solve GDB’s most obvious pain-points, EBS had to go back and rethink the entire system architecture. Since GDB’s platform was data critical, the solution would resemble a serious revamp on a live service, a risk few providers would take. After weeks of analysis, EBS decided to build an infrastructure defined by Kubernetes on Docker, Kafka, ElasticSearch, MongoDB, PostgreSQL and Ansible, while the CI/CD as well as monitoring tasks would be handled by Graylog / Zabbix and Jenkins.

The greatest advantages delivered by EBS’s infrastructure is the possibility of introducing Java and other secondary programming languages that work seamlessly, regardless of the state on another microservice or container.

Availability as a service

The second most great advantage was the possibility to migrate the existing system to a container-based infrastructure gradually. “Rome hasn’t been built in a day and the dynamic migration process enabled us to go from a legacy monolithic system to a micro-service paradigm in a step-by-step manner to avoid massive data loss or service outages.” – stated Mr. Iulian Ciobanu, EBS’ Chief Information Officer. The gradual migration advantage enabled EBS to maintain an online service while migrating key components to microservice structures.

“To solve the most critical GDB challenges we’ve started with the way data is processed. Since our new infrastructure made use of Kafka, we could change the entire data paradigm and enable an asynchronous data processing model and this allowed us to deploy several clusters for Elasticsearch. As a result, query times have been reduced with 80% building premises for a healthier and more reliable processing environment.“ states Mr. Ion Aremescu, the Lead System Engineer for GDB project.

A new data approach

With no doubt, the most lucrative strategic decision EBS took was to migrate GDB to a microservice-based structure powered by Kubernetes. Before going this path, processing data arrays could take up to a minute. Now, GDB’s data processing metrics fell under 20 seconds per high-load queries and in some instances, these times go as low as 800 milliseconds. Given their fail-proof strategies, EBS engineers delivered a system aware of its own resource consumption. This allows resource adjustment based on specific cost policies processed an AI algorithm.

Top-performance / lower costs

“What EBS did has certainly exceeded all our initial expectations. We’ve seen impressive cost savings on our server resources, an UX that is faster, snappier, more relatable to our end-users and we haven’t had an outage in months. Furthermore, the new system design saves us an average of €100 per day. At this rate, the GDB rewrite project will recoup itself within the next 3 years.” – states Mr. Ion Aremescu, the Lead System Engineer for GDB project.

A true bargain

The entire transition process took a bit longer than a system rewrite would, however, this build premises of making it possible on an always-on service. During 8 months of development, GDB has been up and running without any interruptions, delivering the benefit of interactive end-user feedback regards new features and improvements performed on the platform:

“Working on the live system in the manner EBS proposed, actually paid off. We got interactive feedback regards eventual features, the overall system performance and lucrative suggestions from live customers – this is how we got as close to our end-users’ needs as possible. Looking back, I honestly believe that working with EBS, has been and is a total bargain.” – states Mr. Nicolae Buldumac, Managing Director, at Global Database.

End Notes

At the moment, Global Database is one of EBS’ centerpiece projects, enabled by Continuous Integration and Delivery. Since EBS started on the right foot, the team can now deliver new features and platform improvements in a non-intrusive manner – with a 99.99% uptime in service delivery.

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Customer Feedback

Our new platform is more effective than some of the solutions put forth by the giants in our industry. Site response times are trice faster, while cost savings driven by efficient resource usage average around €13,000 per quarter. EBS Integrator was as proactive, efficient and responsive as an in-house team.

Nicolae Buldumac

Director at Global Database LTD

The new software has streamlined employee tasks, improved internal communication, and reduced the need for administrator engagement. EBS Integrator implemented a detailed, accurate project plan that allowed them to remain on schedule and within the proposed budget.

Valters Grobins

CEO at Cloudscheduling.se

Even though they’re on the other side of the world, it seems like they’re right down the hall. Users are impressed with the technology made available through the site. EBS Integrator is able to translate ideas into a product, effectively using their resources to respond to the client’s feedback. The team is communicative and available.

David Drake

the Innovator behind Donate Smarter

EBS Integrator produced top-notch development work with few delays. Their technical expertise, systematic processes, and organization made for a smooth workflow.

Axel Lagercrantz

CEO at Hastnet

Because we were so happy with how they worked, we didn’t reach out to anyone else for our second project. Both apps receive positive feedback from users and were delivered with very few bugs. They make you feel like you are their only client.

Makan Amini

HKS insight and Second Opinion Product Manager

EBS Integrator met the beneficiary’s standards and produced the product within the timeline. Their team was prompt and approachable. Expect a team dedicated to delivering the best for their clients.

Alexandru Platon

Program Manager, Institute for Public Policy

The 80% user retention rate is the most prominent KPI of the app, while the net promoter score also boasts a positive metric. EBS has a professional team who is willing to provide honest and proactive feedback, and it’s been apparent how much they truly care about the end product.

Eyass Shakrah

Product Owner for Learn2Drive

They were serious about the project. The website was launched successfully at a reasonable price. The EBS team was diligent and organized. We’ve successfully launched our startup. They delivered a high-quality web application.

Lionel Kayser

CEO & Founder, My Simple Pharma

The app has numerous downloads and positive ratings in both app stores. The team’s efficiency and diligence made the project a success. They were polite, professional, and extremely skilled at all aspects of project design and execution.

Itay Naftaly

CEO at NFO LTD

Due to their functionality and straightforward UI/UX, both apps have attracted praise from customers. EBS Integrator’s concise communication, transparent billing methods, and prompt turnaround time make the partnership rewarding.

Richard Tella

Founder of Qwids