Smart solutions for clever minds

The Problem

Kablamo was engaged by one of Australia’s leading Universities, home to some of the most cutting-edge research and development projects in the world. The computing requirements across the University’s various Research and Development departments were exceeding their current capacity creating both bottlenecks and quiet periods.

Because they require large amounts of computational power to perform complex modelling and data analysis, universities have traditionally maintained their own computing infrastructure. However, this requires a large investment in hardware as well as high maintenance and development costs. Additionally, academic workloads are uneven, with high peak loads that stretch resources and then periods of time when infrastructure is largely unused. Read the first part of our dedicated engineering blog about scaling here.

Kablamo was engaged by the University to deploy AWS Service Workbench, so that the University could assess how it could be used by research departments. From an initial proof of concept it was quickly moved into production as the University saw the value of the solution and working with Kablamo.

The Approach

AWS Service Workbench (SWB) is an attractive solution for universities and researchers as they don’t need to be experts in ‘cloud’ technology and the AWS infrastructure to use it. Researchers can securely store and share their data and there is no need for them to wait for their turn to use university computing facilities. You can read more about Service Workbench in part two of our engineering blog here.

Kablamo held workshops with the University researchers identified as potential early adopters for the new cloud-based platform. The technical approach centred around building a continuous delivery pipeline with custom functionality. A complete AMI building pipeline was also constructed and custom IAM roles and policies were implemented.

The University didn’t have extensive experience in Agile Delivery and entrusted Kablamo to educate and direct them through this process. This helped the University review internal processes and assess where this method of project delivery could be used in other areas.

The Result

Working collaboratively with the University’s DevOps team Kablamo developed, deployed and now provide ongoing support for the AWS SWB solution which has ensured the project’s success. Kablamo delivered a solution that was cost-effective, easy to use, and fit within the University’s existing practices for running and accessing cloud infrastructure. This approach has resulted in an uplift in the internal DevOps team’s capabilities and processes along with developing the University’s knowledge of Agile methodologies.

Kablamo provided highly supportable and scalable solutions for the University’s research groups giving them clear reporting and cost management visibility which was previously absent. Since the solution went into production 80 researchers across 16 research departments have been onboarded with Kablamo providing ongoing Product Care support. New and exciting discoveries await.