Customer Stories / Software & Internet / United States, Vietnam
Katalon Delivers 70%+ Savings with Serverless Streaming Analytics Using AWS Lambda
Learn how Katalon modernized the infrastructure for its quality management platform as a service using Amazon MSK and AWS Lambda.
Accommodated
variable workloads and 30,000+ customers
Up to 70% cost savings
for customers using Katalon
Improved time to market
for customers
Off-loaded management
of compute clusters
Overview
Katalon provides a comprehensive quality management platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help customers test software in development. The company’s goal is to speed up the laborious and costly process of software testing before customer products go into the marketplace. Katalon had launched its solutions natively in the cloud, building its automation-testing applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As the company grew, it sought to modernize its infrastructure on AWS so that it could accommodate additional customers and their variable workloads. By implementing managed, serverless solutions from AWS, Katalon has automated its ability to scale while helping customers improve their time to market and save up to 70 percent on costs. “Our mission is to empower teams of all sizes to deliver exceptional digital quality experiences in a faster way than what they’re doing now,” says Binh Tran Du Hoa, vice president of product management at Katalon. “If we aim to inspire companies to make quality their essential catalyst, we need to be recognized as a leading innovator in software quality.”
Opportunity | Using Amazon MSK to Process Streaming Data for Katalon
In 2016, Katalon launched its AI-powered, comprehensive quality management platform to help customers alleviate bottlenecks in the software development lifecycle by seamlessly integrating automation into the testing process for web, API, desktop, and mobile applications. Katalon Platform incorporates AI to optimize test creation, planning, organization, runtime analysis, and maintenance.
Initially, Katalon built its applications using open-source Apache Kafka to capture near-real-time streaming data. Katalon engineers had to set up and manage workflows for a growing number of customers who generated workloads with large fluctuations in volume depending on the time of day. “At first, we didn’t have a messaging system, and using a database to store all the events caused a crunch in processing,” says Vu Bui, application architect at Katalon. “We figured out that this is not the way to scale.”
In 2019, Katalon turned to Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), which companies can use to ingest and process streaming data in near real time with fully managed Apache Kafka. For example, companies that run automation test cases using Katalon Studio, the company’s desktop application, produce extensive results that upload automatically to the Katalon Platform for processing and analysis, displaying results to customers in a dashboard. Behind the scenes, engineers can create, update, and delete Amazon MSK clusters with a few clicks while managing a separate cluster of processing power using AWS Elastic Beanstalk, a service that companies can use to deploy web applications. “We were growing very fast,” says Tran. “We wanted to continue to optimize our infrastructure so that it could grow with us. We always have to prioritize the ability to scale in order to provide our solution in a reliable manner to our customers.”
Using AWS, we can focus on understanding our customers and addressing their needs. And we don’t have to worry about the technical feasibility of that.”
Binh Tran Du Hoa
Vice President of Product Management, Katalon
Solution | Cutting Costs up to 70% for Customers Using AWS Lambda
Katalon embarked on a project to further modernize its infrastructure by using microservices to handle the event messaging workflow, offload management of compute clusters, and optimize the use of automation. To seamlessly accommodate customers’ fluctuating workloads, Katalon turned to AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets organizations run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. More than 30,000 software, DevOps, and quality teams test and launch their software faster using Katalon’s solutions. “The best benefit is the scalability,” says Bui. “Using AWS Lambda, we don’t need to manage any physical node to provide the processing power. It handles the scaling.” Because customers test more efficiently, they save significant costs. “Some of our customers have said that they cut 40–70 percent of their testing costs after switching to Katalon solutions,” says Tran.
Katalon has also improved the productivity of its own teams. “We develop new products and features much faster than we did before,” says Tran. “Using AWS, we can focus on understanding our customers and addressing their needs. And we don’t have to worry about the technical feasibility of that.”
The company continues to focus on optimizing its serverless infrastructure. It has been working to remove or break down messages that exceed the 15-minute processing limit of AWS Lambda functions, with the idea of phasing out the use of AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The company also plans to upgrade to Java 11 so that it can take advantage of AWS Lambda SnapStart for Java, which can improve startup performance for latency-sensitive applications by up to 10 times at no extra cost, typically with no changes to function code. And new services launch using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), a managed Kubernetes service on AWS, as Katalon plans to migrate the existing compute infrastructure to Amazon EKS as its next modernization focus.
Outcome | Expanding a Global Footprint with Solutions on AWS Marketplace
Katalon offers its software-as-a-service solutions on AWS Marketplace, which simplifies the procurement, provisioning, and governance of third-party software, services, and data. As a result, Katalon customers can seamlessly introduce Katalon test automation and management solutions into their workflows, which in turn helps Katalon to expand its global footprint. The company also has plans to expand to AWS Region and Availability Zones in Europe and Asia Pacific.
“The sum of it is that, using AWS, we can scale to bring in a lot more customers,” says Bui. “We worry less about infrastructure, because we have created a very good backbone for our messaging system. We have more resources to focus on more appealing features for our customers.”
About Katalon
Launched in 2016, Katalon offers a modern, comprehensive quality management platform that applies artificial intelligence to help more than 30,000 quality assurance, DevOps, and software teams of any size to deliver world-class customer experiences more efficiently.
AWS Services Used
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers.
Amazon MSK
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) makes it easy to ingest and process streaming data in real time with fully managed Apache Kafka.
Amazon EKS
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service to run Kubernetes in the AWS cloud and on-premises data centers.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk deploys web applications so that you can focus on your business.
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