Fractal Case Study: Deliver At Lightning Speed

Focusing on Business Logic Instead of The Infrastructure with Commandeer

Fractal (founded by former Pivotal Labs employees), partners with companies to build amazing engineering teams and culture. It’s best known for the ability to hit the ground running, delivering results from day one.

"Commandeer allows our developers to focus on the business logic instead of spending countless hours on the infrastructure." - Ross Hale, CEO @ Fractal

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Problem

In this day and age, the speed of software delivery is your competitive advantage. It allows you to reduce the time to market and to take advantage of new opportunities. To do this for an ever growing client base, Fractal engineers need the right cloud development tools. Tools that make them more efficient and able to shift contexts quicker.

Solution

Develop Locally

The key to the high velocity of software development is to shorten the feedback loop between writing the code and seeing it in action. By developing and running the cloud software locally, Fractal developers can iterate quickly.

Writing Infrastructure as Code

Instead of manually clicking buttons to launch cloud resources, like servers and databases, managing it through IaC (Infrastructure as Code) has many advantages. IaC allows engineers to write configuration once and then apply it automatically to each environment consistently.

Managing Docker Containers

The days of managing the individual servers are passing by. Containers help us manage the precious resources more wisely offering additional consistency between the local and the cloud environment.

Use-Cases

LocalStack Integration

Using Commandeer’s seamless integration with LocalStack, engineers are able to see the resources inside their local development machines to troubleshoot issues quickly. It allows for solving the vast majority of problems locally before the software gets deployed to the cloud.

Ansible and Serverless Runners

Running Ansible and Serverless from a GUI is so much easier than using a command line. Once the account is set up in Commandeer, running the configuration is as easy as a click of a button. Also, with having the multiple AWS accounts set up, engineers can easily deploy the same, consistent IaC code into multiple environments.

Docker Container Management and Docker Compose Runner

The ability to see your Docker infrastructure visually is priceless. You can see your Docker containers and the connections between them locally in a System Diagram in Commandeer. It also allows you to do the full set of operations on Docker images, containers, networks and volumes for your local system for maximum productivity.

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Outcome

Fractal engineers are equipped with the best in class development tools to provide some outstanding services to their clients. Using Commandeer, allows Fractal to deliver better software faster. The best cloud development tools create higher work satisfaction which is important for building a strong engineering culture.

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