Abit Agritech Builds a Minimum Viable Product in 6 Months Using AWS Amplify | Case Study | AWS Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App Customer Stories / Software & Internet / Italy 2023 Abit Agritech Builds a Minimum Viable Product in 6 Months Using AWS Amplify Learn how Abit Agritech, an agricultural software startup, created a mobile app minimum viable product in 6 months using AWS Amplify. Overview | Opportunity | Solution | Outcome | AWS Services Used 6 months development time for a minimum viable product 70% reduction in costs compared to an on-premises solution 68% improved time to market Empowers farmers with data-driven sustainability insights Overview Agricultural startup Abit Agritech (Abit) created the minimum viable product (MVP) of its mobile app in 6 months using Amazon Web Services (AWS) while facing a tight deadline to create a flexible application with scalable features. The company’s focus is on biodiversity and sustainable farming. To improve the technology and tangibility of data for farmers, Abit decided to build a mobile app to provide farmers with data-driven insights about soil quality, weather patterns, biodiversity, and more to support sustainable agricultural practices. Aiming to quickly develop an MVP to be ready in time for the farming season, the company used AWS Amplify, a complete solution that front-end web and mobile developers can use to easily build, ship, and host full-stack applications on AWS. The company uses AWS Amplify Studio, Amplify’s visual interface, for its frontend UI. Abit has subsequently improved development speed, improved time to market, and reduced costs. Opportunity | Using AWS Amplify to Improve Development Speed for a New Abit Agritech Mobile App Founded in 2022, the company of five people based in Milan, Italy, emerged around a shared mission to build an agricultural technology company focused on sustainable solutions. Abit focuses on improving biodiversity, in response to the European Union’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, by providing technology and data to farmers and supporting sustainable agriculture. As a startup, Abit knew from the beginning that it wanted the flexibility and scalability offered by serverless cloud architecture so that it would have room to grow. “We chose AWS because we needed to deploy a scalable solution with our business going through a series of massive changes as a startup,” says Chiara Antonucci, CEO and cofounder of Abit. The company reached out to AWS with questions about serverless solutions. Within 1 month, Abit had chosen to work with Corley srl (Corley), an AWS Partner, for its cloud solutions expertise. The MVP mobile app for iOS and Android is designed to gather data about climate and soil conditions using GPS and then provide this information to farmers in a tangible way. Along with this comes a certification for the biodiversity index that can be recognized by stakeholders and gives farmers simplified access to public incentives, like those in the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The app also provides farmers with dedicated support from the Abit team. To create the MVP app and deploy it quickly, the company used AWS Amplify. “AWS Amplify was important to us because it works like a glue for AWS services,” says Antonucci. “It was much easier for us to put together various services for the app.” Abit benefited from having everything in one place, using AWS Amplify Studio to create a rich UI and connect the UI to a backend in a matter of clicks. Working with Corley and using AWS Amplify, Abit developed its MVP app in 6 months, a process that would have taken twice as long otherwise. AWS Amplify was important to us because it works like a glue for AWS services. It was much easier for us to put together various services for the app.” Chiara Antonucci CEO and Cofounder, Abit Agritech Solution | Saving Costs While Improving Farmers’ Sustainability Speed was essential for the release of Abit’s MVP because Abit wanted to align the release of its app with the peak of the farming season. Using AWS Amplify, the company increased its speed to market by 68 percent. This boost was possible because of improved agility using AWS services, which in turn increased developer speed. “Using AWS Amplify, we developed faster with two developers,” says Antonucci. Abit sped up front-end developers by using AWS Amplify to transform its interface design application into code usable for the MVP app. Because Abit uses AWS Amplify to handle the heavy lifting for code, its developers can focus on innovating rather than managing backend operations. Abit also uses AWS Amplify to incorporate other AWS services into its MVP app. For data collection, Abit uses Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility), a fully managed native JSON document database that makes it simple and cost effective to operate critical document workloads at virtually any scale without managing infrastructure. “Amazon DocumentDB is helpful for us because we use it to store all the data that we have, including climate and temperature data,” says Antonucci. By choosing serverless solutions using AWS, Abit saves on costs because it doesn’t need to host or manage servers. Compared to a local or on-premises solution, Abit has a 70 percent reduction in costs using serverless solutions on AWS. “We turn this cost reduction directly back to our customers so that they can benefit from a smart solution at a cheaper price,” says Antonucci. Additionally, Abit’s serverless architecture gives the company the opportunity to test in new marketplaces with an increase only in operating costs. “Using AWS services, we can grow in a different marketplace with no increase in fixed costs,” says Antonucci. “This is very important to us as a startup, as we are growing and entering a new marketplace to see if it fits with our MVP application.” Most importantly, Abit’s MVP app works well for farmers promoting biodiversity and benefits the end customer. Farmers can use the app to register their fields and, thanks to GPS localization, can see relevant climate information, such as temperature and condensation, to improve everyday field management. Abit can calculate the biodiversity index for the field, and the farmer can access dedicated support provided by the Abit team by using the app. By using these weather and soil insights, farmers are better equipped to prepare crops with sustainability and biodiversity in mind. “The MVP app meets our expectations, and our customers are very satisfied,” says Antonucci. “The app helps farmers make the right decisions for everyday management of their fields.” Outcome | Continuing to Develop and Innovate Abit plans to introduce the next version of its app in February 2024. Creating the MVP in 6 months helped set up the business for success. Abit intends to continue improving its mobile app using the extensibility capabilities of AWS Amplify and AWS Amplify Studio to add richer app functionality and to scale to more features for more farmers. “Using AWS services and a partner like Corley, we built an MVP and first release with only two developers, and that was very beneficial for us,” says Antonucci. About Abit Agritech Abit Agritech uses innovative technology to suggest more efficient crop management, with the goal of protecting biodiversity, and provides farmers with the knowledge that they need to improve sustainable agriculture. AWS Services Used AWS Amplify AWS Amplify lets frontend web and mobile developers easily build, ship, and host full-stack applications on AWS, with the flexibility to leverage the breadth of AWS services as use cases evolve. No cloud expertise needed. Learn more » Amazon DocumentDB Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a fully managed native JSON document database that makes it easy and cost effective to operate critical document workloads at virtually any scale without managing infrastructure. Learn more » More Software & Internet Customer Stories no items found 1 … … Get Started Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it

Amazon Music Unifies Music Queuing at Scale Using AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify | Case Study Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App Customer Stories / Media & Entertainment 2022 Amazon Music Unifies Music Queuing at Scale Using AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify Amazon Music used AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify to develop a centralized cloud-queuing solution that scales efficiently to support customer growth and facilitates new feature development and innovation. Overview | Opportunity | Solution | Outcome | AWS Services Used 70,000+ transactions per second Gains offline mobile and web support out of the box Syncs cloud and local queues to a single data model Scales efficiently alongside customer growth Accelerates new feature development and innovation Overview With millions of music lovers modifying their playlists and queues, switching between mobile and voice devices, and going in and out of network connectivity, music streaming service Amazon Music needs to deliver an engaging, low-latency experience. To create this seamless customer experience while scaling to support peak workloads, Amazon Music decided to build a centralized, cloud-based queuing system with an on-device storage feature that supports offline playback and automatic data synchronization between clients and the central queuing system. The streaming service looked to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a solution that could closely fit its use case, work effectively alongside its existing AWS infrastructure, and scale to support its users. Amazon Music built the solution—called Cloud Queue—on AWS AppSync, a fully managed service that makes it simple to develop GraphQL and Pub/Sub APIs by handling the heavy lifting of securely connecting to data sources. Amazon Music also employed AWS Amplify, which lets front-end web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack applications on AWS. To help bidirectional data synchronization and support new experiences, Amazon Music uses the Amplify feature Amplify DataStore—which provides a persistent on-device storage repository for users to write, read, and observe changes to data either online or offline—to manage local and cloud-generated music queues, handle transient network outages, and synchronize data to the central cloud-queuing system. Using Cloud Queue, Amazon Music delivers performance at scale while enhancing its ability to deliver new features and improvements to its users. Opportunity | Seeking a Flexible, Centralized Queuing Solution Amazon Music offers streaming access to songs, stations, playlists, and podcasts through several service tiers. Its premium product, Amazon Music Unlimited, provides on-demand access to more than 90 million songs. The service delivers listening experiences to an international customer base across multiple devices and relies on machine learning–powered recommendations and voice capabilities to deliver personalized experiences. Initially, Amazon Music implemented music-queuing features separately for each of its supported devices and built local data models independently of one another. But that meant a user’s play queue was tied to just one device at a time. “We needed a centralized, common representation of a music queue playing on a device,” says Caleb Gross, senior engineer on the Cloud Queue team at Amazon Music. “Without that, we were limited in terms of some of the features that we wanted to build, including the ability to move a queue from one device to the next.” By developing a central, cloud-backed data model, Amazon Music could support moving queues between devices and give its teams the tools to build and launch new experiences in a common way. The team considered building a solution in-house but ultimately decided that it would be faster and more cost effective to find existing solutions that could provide the required robustness and functionality. It chose AWS AppSync and Amplify DataStore because of their high availability, flexible scaling, strong support, compatibility with supporting AWS services, and native support for the apps that Amazon Music operated, such as iOS and Android. Using a managed service like AWS AppSync alongside AWS Amplify, we don’t need to spend as much time thinking about operations. We can spend more time doing what we do well, including building new customer experiences.” Caleb Gross Senior Engineer on the Cloud Queue team, Amazon Music Solution | Delivering Data Synchronization at Scale on AWS Amazon Music began work on the cloud-queuing project in May 2020, rebuilding its services on the new solution and delivering its first major launch in July 2021. The solution employs many AWS services, including services for networking, serverless computing, data storage, and logging and monitoring. Amazon Music also used AWS services to proactively debug issues and acquire performance insights to reduce latency by hundreds of milliseconds and support a successful solution launch. “At its simplest, it’s a full-feature music-queuing system that’s hosted in the cloud,” says Gross. “A key advantage of using AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify is that we have both cloud-based support and local-queuing logic support, so we can take advantage of local data and logic when it is available while also leveraging the intelligence and flexibility of the cloud.” In addition to supporting queuing with local data, the solution also syncs locally stored queues back to the cloud, delivering centralized queue storage in a single data model. Amazon Music relies on AWS AppSync to host its external APIs for its data model operations. These data models are stored in the cloud in Amazon DynamoDB, a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database, and locally in Amplify DataStore. To smoothly incorporate its AWS Amplify assets into its build and deployment processes, Amazon Music also relies on the extensibility features of Amplify, including the command hooks and export features. Amazon Music is also working to innovate using the subscriptions feature using Amplify. “You can make a change in the cloud and then propagate that change to the local data on devices without requiring the device to poll for updates,” says Gross. Using this feature, Amazon Music can combine the low latency of local-data experiences with the intelligent optimization of cloud-based services. “We can use this functionality to deliver a snappy local-data feel while still making cloud-based improvements to the delivery of content,” says Gross. “This is a fundamental technological issue that we are using AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify to help us solve.” Using AWS AppSync for Cloud Queue, Amazon Music scales with customer growth and handles peak throughput of more than 70,000 transactions per second. Amazon Music also minimizes its day-to-day administration efficiently because it relies on AWS to manage scaling, availability, and maintenance. “Using a managed service like AWS AppSync alongside AWS Amplify, we don’t need to spend as much time thinking about operations and scaling,” says Gross. “We can spend more time doing what we do well, including building new customer experiences.” Outcome | Investing in Building New Customer Experiences Using AWS AppSync and Amplify, Amazon Music has established foundational queuing-platform improvements and is actively building new and improved customer features on top of it. “The ultimate business objective is velocity so that we can delight our customers faster,” says Gross. “Having a centralized, synchronized queue data solution helps us to build common features across our different apps and bring new features to customers more quickly.” The team at Amazon Music plans to continue improving the user experience by using AWS AppSync and Amplify to support innovative new features, such as DJ Mode, which incorporates artist-related content and DJ-style commentary into music queues. Further, there’s strong support within Amazon Music to continue investing in the Cloud Queue solution. “Cloud Queue has become central to all things going on in Amazon Music,” says Gross. “And many teams are talking with us internally about how they want to use it to onboard new experiences.” About Amazon Music Amazon Music is a streaming service offering access to thousands of stations and playlists and millions of podcast episodes, with offline listening and voice capabilities. Its Amazon Music Unlimited service provides on-demand access to more than 90 million songs. AWS Services Used AWS AppSync AWS AppSync is a serverless GraphQL and Pub/Sub API service that simplifies building modern web and mobile applications. Learn more » AWS Amplify AWS Amplify is a set of purpose-built tools and features that lets frontend web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack applications on AWS. Learn more » Amazon DynamoDB Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. Learn more » Amplify DataStore Amplify DataStore is an on-device storage engine that automatically synchronizes data between your mobile and web apps and your database in the AWS cloud to help you build real-time and offline apps faster. Learn more » Get Started Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it

Branch’s Serverless First Architecture Approach Makes it Easy to Bundle Home and Auto Coverage | AWS Startups Blog Skip to Main Content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App AWS Blog Home Blogs Editions Close Architecture AWS Cloud Operations & Migrations AWS for Games AWS Insights AWS Marketplace AWS News AWS Partner Network AWS Smart Business Big Data Business Intelligence Business Productivity Cloud Enterprise Strategy Cloud Financial Management Compute Contact Center Containers Database Desktop & Application Streaming Developer Tools DevOps Front-End Web & Mobile HPC IBM and Red Hat Industries Integration & Automation Internet of Things Machine Learning Media Messaging & Targeting Microsoft Workloads on AWS .NET on AWS Networking & Content Delivery Open Source Public Sector Quantum Computing Robotics SAP Security Spatial Computing Startups Storage Supply Chain & Logistics Training & Certification Close 中国版 日本版 한국 에디션 기술 블로그 Edisi Bahasa Indonesia AWS Thai Blog Édition Française Deutsche Edition Edição em Português Edición en Español Версия на русском Türkçe Sürüm AWS Startups Blog Branch’s Serverless First Architecture Approach Makes it Easy to Bundle Home and Auto Coverage by Mikey Tom | on 14 APR 2020 | in Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Amplify, AWS AppSync, AWS Lambda, Serverless, Startup | Permalink | Share “Protect yourself from mayhem.” “15 minutes could save you 15% or more.” “You’re in good hands.” Do those slogans sound familiar? It’s probably because insurance companies heavily invest in marketing, bombarding us with varying messages that try and attach a sense of fun and security to an industry that counts a huge proportion of adults in the United States as potential customers. The necessity of their products predictably creates a massive market, one that some estimate totals roughly $273 billion annually. To benchmark, that’s comparable to the U.S. consumer electronics’ total addressable market in 2019. Despite existing insurance companies best efforts, the process of buying home or auto insurance, let alone bundling them together, is rarely easy or clear. Rates change, coverage is confusing, and understanding why is anything but intuitive. New companies have recognized this traditional complexity as an opportunity. Today, startups like Branch Insurance are radically simplifying the insurance experience for customers. Founded in 2018, Branch offers the ability to buy bundled home and auto insurance online at a price much lower than existing players can give. To understand how they do this, it’s helpful to understand how traditional insurers have historically bundled policies. Joe Emison, Co-founder & CTO Perhaps unsurprisingly, an industry as old as insurance isn’t exactly optimized for modern customer needs, per company Co-founder and CTO Joe Emison. “Before Branch, bundling home and auto insurance was an expensive and opaque process. It would start with a customer likely purchasing an auto policy, and then being offered a fake price for home coverage by that same provider. The catch is, that provider would then send the customer to another call center owned by another insurance company that will then sell you their product.” Not only is that an inefficient process, but having multiple different providers involved also causes prices to bloat. Each company takes a cut, which results in anywhere from a 7% to 13% increase in costs for each customer, according to Emison. In an industry as big as home and auto insurance, that percentage of excess presents a large opportunity to trim some fat and optimize. With Branch, 90% of the users that come to their site from Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, and Missouri—the states the company currently supports—are able to just enter in their name and address to get a bindable price for bundled home and auto insurance. No calling one agency just to get connected to another, and then ending up with an inflated price. The startups’ roots can be traced back to the two co-founders’ previous jobs. Prior to Branch, Emison founded various startups, one being BuildFax, a provider of building permit data to customers like hedge funds or insurance companies. That’s how he met Branch’s other Co-founder, CEO Steve Lekas, who was running data operations at Allstate. Emison spent the next few years launching and operating his own startups, while Lekas rose through the ranks of Allstate. While he was there, the insurance giant acquired a smaller company called Esurance. Lekas was tasked with launching new products at the recently acquired company. He then moved to Verisk (one of the two largest insurance data companies in the world), eventually managing their largest business segment: home and auto. Steve Lekas, Co-founder & CEO All that time in the insurance industry gave Lekas a prime view into its inner workings, and all the inefficiencies to be solved. When he was ready to jump ship and launch his own company, he realized he needed a technical co-founder and pitched Emison, who saw hopping on board as a no brainer. From a technical perspective, managing insurance policies at scale is no easy feat. Each contract is heavily regulated, complicated, and long. Filings frequently contain over 10,000 pages of content, and governments require a full audit history for any changes that are made. To manage this complexity, Emison and Branch turned to AWS and its purpose-built services, like AWS AppSync, AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB. “The existing tools for the insurance industry are really dated. Because of that, we’ve done a ton of custom internal development, along with leveraging many AWS products. It’s been great to have services like AppSync, Lambda, and DynamoDB that work together to take a lot of the development time off our plates. For example, AppSync lives in our API hub, where it shuttles traffic that contains authentication information to Lambda functions. This controls what privileges a user should be given. DynamoDB is a great tool for storing full records, as you can set triggers within its streams. If there’s a failure, DynamoDB will either keep retrying or make sure you can’t move on until it’s processed. We love these architectural models and didn’t see them in other offerings in the market.” It’s worth noting that Emison has written and talked extensively on the topic of serverless architecture. Feel free to read or watch to learn more about what he sees as its main benefits, such as its ability to decrease the amount of back-end code needed and reduce technical debt. The team also chose to leverage AWS Amplify to speed up their development cycles, per Adithya Reddy, Full Stack Engineer at Branch. “We chose Amplify libraries because we believed it would accelerate our development speed and time to market, it did just that. Amplify libraries, particularly the authentication feature, moved us so much quicker to MVP phase and onboarding customers. Amplify invoked the many steps needed to create an authentication flow so we just didn’t have to think about, the Amplify library did it out of the box. I credit Amplify for getting us to market 6 months faster than if we had not used it. As our business continues to scale, Amplify also allows us to customize AWS services to match our business needs, this has been another important aspect of getting started with Amplify.” For the future of Branch, it’s all about expanding into new markets. Currently live in five states, the company is looking to be available to over 50% of the U.S. population by the end of 2020. With $8.5 million in venture funding secured, their expansion will be a welcome arrival for insurance consumers seeking clear, streamlined, cost-effective insurance options amid a sea of confusing and costly alternatives. TAGS: Customer Profile, Insurance Tech Mikey Tom Mikey works on the AWS Startup Marketing team to help highlight awesome founders leveraging the AWS ecosystem in interesting ways. Prior to his time at AWS, Mikey led the venture capital news coverage at PitchBook, researching and writing about industry trends and events. Resources AWS Activate AWS for Startups Resources Build Your Startup with AWS AWS for Startups Events Follow AWS Startups Twitter AWS Cloud Twitter AWS Startups Facebook AWS Startups Instagram AWS Startups LinkedIn Twitch Email Updates Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Busby Case Study | Mobile App Development | AWS Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App Busby Grows 860% in 1 Year, from MVP to Thriving User Base, with App Built Using AWS Amplify 2021 After a serious bicycle accident that nearly cost Barry Green his life, he and his friends had an idea for automating the detection of emergency incidents. Their outdoor activities safety app Busby would use the sensors in a user’s mobile phone to detect a fall or crash and notify someone who could help. Green and his friends needed a fast way to develop a high-quality application while maintaining their full-time day jobs. They first turned to software houses, who quoted them at least $150,000 just to build a minimum viable product (MVP), a necessity to attract seed money. They needed a simple, cost-effective tool to build the MVP themselves. After months of searching for application development solutions, the three cofounders of the British-based startup chose to build their MVP using Amazon Web Services (AWS). “I came across this cool new solution that’s very simple to adopt for a startup with no dedicated developers,” says Kirk Ryan, Busby’s chief technology officer and cofounder. That solution was AWS Amplify, a set of tools and services to help front-end web and mobile developers build scalable full-stack applications. Using it, the Busby founders cost-effectively built a serverless MVP in just 3 months and then rapidly grew the app’s users. Busby is now involved in strategic partnerships with other businesses that will significantly grow its user base. We increase productivity on AWS Amplify. Developers can implement and manage features with ease. GraphQL APIs are instantly built for us; it’s one of my favorite parts of using the solution.” Kirk Ryan Chief Technology Officer and Cofounder, Busby MVP Speed to Market To build the Busby MVP, the founders decided to take a serverless-first approach that would enable them to build an MVP that was well prepared for future growth. “It was critical that the solution was simple to understand and troubleshoot without sacrificing the ability to scale,” says Ryan. Using AWS Amplify, a single person could manage the entire stack, from front-end components to a serverless cloud backend. The Busby founders chose React Native as their front-end framework, which provides a unified architecture without the need for separate iOS and Android iterations. AWS Amplify also offered full-featured support of React Native, an open-source mobile application framework. Ryan explains, “A startup doesn’t want separate iOS and Android teams, because there would be two distinct skill sets and two lines of code to maintain—basically twice the overhead.” Ryan realized Busby could scale up quickly by relying on the range of offerings—in-depth tutorials and documentation—that made AWS Amplify simple to learn. If information did not appear directly on the AWS site, a thriving and responsive AWS Amplify community steered Ryan toward resources and information. Growing by 860% in Less Than 1 Year on AWS The Busby MVP was built in 3 months. By using AWS Amplify, the Busby team saved months of development time and up to $150,000 by not using a software house. As the app became more popular with consumers such as fitness enthusiasts and horseback riders, an unexpected market opened for Busby: mobility-related businesses showing interest in incorporating the Busby service into their own applications. The startup now has business-to-business partnerships with two providers of electric scooters. Deals with vehicle manufacturers and delivery services are on the horizon, laying the groundwork for the acquisition of hundreds of thousands of additional Busby users in a short period. From March to December 2020, Busby users grew by 860 percent. “AWS hasn’t flinched,” Ryan says. “It’s just taken it in stride.” Busby can handle the rapid increase of new users using AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service that lets the startup run code without provisioning or managing servers. The highly intuitive visual user interface of AWS Amplify enables Busby to quickly onboard developers globally. The team has grown to 13 engineers, and Busby plans to add 7 more by the end of 2021. Using AWS Amplify Admin UI, developers have a highly intuitive and visual demonstration of front-end and backend components. As Busby grows, it is onboarding new engineers to its cross-border development team. Using AWS Amplify Admin UI, Busby can communicate context simply while keeping things running smoothly with dedicated backend environments for development, staging, and production. “AWS Amplify Admin UI has been significant for us because it’s so visually oriented,” says Ryan. “We’re able to onboard developers who quickly gain an understanding of how things are connected. That way, new developers don’t have to rely on code and reverse engineer things in their mind. It’s very simple for them to just be productive.” Busby also implemented GraphQL APIs built using AWS AppSync, a fully managed GraphQL service that improves performance and enables companies to build applications faster. Ryan was pleased with the high level of GraphQL observability achieved on AWS. “We increase productivity on AWS Amplify,” says Ryan. “Developers can implement and manage features with ease. GraphQL APIs are instantly built for us; it’s one of my favorite parts of using the solution.” Ryan says he can easily visualize and understand the state of Busby’s whole system, locate potential areas of failure, and interact with components, log stores, and related services. “Technology wise, we’re in dreamland.” Continuing to Grow on AWS Amplify Using AWS Amplify enabled the small Busby team to create an MVP quickly and cost-effectively in just 3 months and then adjust to exponential growth. Looking forward, Busby plans to further grow its user base by connecting directly with consumers and through more business-to-business partnerships. As a serverless application, Busby can take on hundreds of thousands of new users and maintain reliability and performance without rearchitecting its technology stack. “There aren’t many solutions for startups that offer everything you need. AWS Amplify helped us build our MVP and has grown with us,” says Ryan. About Busby Busby is an outdoor activities safety app covering cycling, scootering, running, walking, and more. The app detects user incidents and sends out automatic alerts in cases of emergency. Benefits of AWS Developed a minimum viable product in 3 months Saved over $150,000 using AWS instead of a software house Onboarded new developers quickly and simply Scaled with ease to meet user base growth of 860% in less than 1 year AWS Services Used AWS Amplify AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that can be used together or on their own, to help front-end web and mobile developers build scalable full stack applications, powered by AWS. Learn more » AWS AppSync AWS AppSync is a fully managed service that makes it easy to develop GraphQL APIs by handling the heavy lifting of securely connecting to data sources like AWS DynamoDB, Lambda, and more. Learn more » AWS Lambda AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, creating workload-aware cluster scaling logic, maintaining event integrations, or managing runtimes. Learn more » Get Started Companies of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS Cloud journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it

HyperTrack Case Study Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App HyperTrack Uses AWS for Real-Time Data Processing for Live Location Tracking at Scale 2020 HyperTrack is a self-serve cloud platform for live location tracking through apps. Tens of thousands of developers from various industries and regions use the managed service to track the real-time movement of their assets without building or managing their own infrastructure. “We make it as easy as possible for any developer to add live location tracking to their apps,” says Thomas Raffetseder, software architect at HyperTrack. “Developers add our SDK to their apps, and we provide accurate and real-time location data back to them in the cloud through their APIs. For instance, a leading oil and gas company uses an oil pumper app built with HyperTrack. It uses tracking data to understand how pumpers spend their time, and to make real-time routing decisions so they can be more productive.” When it launched in late 2015, HyperTrack needed to build a platform that could scale automatically. “As a startup, we knew we would grow quickly and continue to grow, and we wanted to have infrastructure available to support us on a larger scale without us having to manage and maintain it ourselves,” says Raffetseder. HyperTrack also needed the ability to visualize data for millions of devices in the field and to notify customers when their business assets have arrived at a destination. “We had to provide that real-time location update, which is what our customers need,” Raffetseder says. “That was a use case we had to solve before we really rolled out our service to customers.” Using AWS AppSync, we had high confidence the service would work without an extreme level of additional operational overhead. We got our solution up and running in days instead of weeks." Thomas Raffetseder Software Architect, HyperTrack Using AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify to Streamline Development To achieve these goals, HyperTrack developed a serverless platform on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. It took advantage of AWS Lambda for serverless compute and Amazon Kinesis for ingesting the data streams from the company’s SDKs, processing them for accuracy, and making locations available for real-time features. “When we started, the question wasn’t if we should do cloud—it was which cloud,” says Raffetseder. “AWS had been the cloud computing leader for a long time, and it provides the maturity and cloud services we were looking for.” HyperTrack also chose AWS AppSync to visualize real-time data for millions of devices. AWS AppSync simplifies development by enabling developers to create APIs that access and combine data from different sources. The service uses the GraphQL API query language for data flow to applications. “We needed the ability to support GraphQL in our pipeline for both front-end and mobile teams to consume,” says Raffetseder. “Instead of having to use our own proprietary format, we like what GraphQL provided as a standard, and AWS AppSync was the perfect choice to enable that.” Using AppSync, along with the AWS Amplify mobile development framework, HyperTrack is able to deliver millions of data points to its customers. Delivering Data in Days Instead of Weeks Without using AWS AppSync and Amplify, HyperTrack would have spent much more time trying to achieve real-time data processing. “We don’t have a dedicated operations team here, and we would have had to set this up from scratch and then try to forecast the load to make sure it all works under certain conditions,” says Raffetseder. “Using AWS AppSync, we had high confidence the service would work without an extreme level of additional operational overhead. We got our solution up and running in days instead of weeks.” Relying on AWS serverless architecture, HyperTrack can scale up and down automatically without engineering intervention. “Using a serverless approach on AWS, our solution auto-scales by design, so we can just focus on the schema and how data is actually flowing through the clients,” says Raffetseder. “We don’t have to worry about actually managing the performance of a GraphQL server, so we were able to quickly scale to meet demand. We started with a new product with no users and we now have hundreds of millions of events on our platform. We could not have done that without AWS.” Improving Accuracy and Processing Time Because HyperTrack does not spend time managing infrastructure, it can pay full attention to adding more value for customers. “No one is going to use HyperTrack because we have a great GraphQL server. They use us because we provide great value to their business,” says Raffetseder. “Using AWS AppSync and AWS serverless architecture, we have a fully managed service and we don’t have to worry about making the infrastructure more solid. As a result, we can do research on what our customers really care about. That means we have been able to focus on building awesome live location experiences for our product, which helps our customers build better businesses and product experiences for their customers.” In addition, HyperTrack is saving money by not needing to overprovision capacity for workloads. “We are seeing a 30 percent cost savings compared to the architecture we were using before we switched to serverless,” says Alexander Kishinevsky, vice president of engineering for HyperTrack. “A big part of that savings comes from not needing operational resources to focus on server management. That’s 40 hours of work we save, every single week. That’s significant for a startup like us, and it represents money we can put back into enhancing our product. By using AWS, we can put our efforts into giving our customers the best possible solution.” To learn more, visit aws.amazon.com/appsync. About HyperTrack HyperTrack offers a managed service for building live location apps. The company’s managed service powers live location tracking for workforce automation, logistics, on-demand delivery, the gig economy, ridesharing, and many more businesses. HyperTrack is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with teams in Ukraine and India. Benefits of AWS Enables real-time data processing in days instead of weeks Saves 40 hours a week, so it can spend more time creating new features Helps a small team manage millions of events Reduces operational costs by 30% by relying on a fully managed service AWS Services Used AWS AppSync AWS AppSync simplifies application development by letting you create a flexible API to securely access, manipulate, and combine data from one or more data sources. AppSync is a managed service that uses GraphQL to make it easy for applications to get exactly the data they need. Learn more » Amazon Kinesis Amazon Kinesis makes it easy to collect, process, and analyze real-time, streaming data so you can get timely insights and react quickly to new information. Amazon Kinesis offers key capabilities to cost-effectively process streaming data at any scale, along with the flexibility to choose the tools that best suit the requirements of your application. Learn more » AWS Lambda AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume. Learn more » AWS Amplify AWS Amplify is a development platform for building secure, scalable mobile and web applications. It makes it easy for you to authenticate users, securely store data and user metadata, authorize selective access to data, integrate machine learning, analyze application metrics, and execute server-side code. Learn more » Get Started Companies of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS Cloud journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it

Neiman Marcus Case Study | AWS Amplify | AWS Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App Neiman Marcus Increases New Application Speed to Market by 50% on AWS, Improves Digital Selling for Associates 2021 A luxury household name, Neiman Marcus has a reputation for delivering a first-class, personalized customer service experience. To modernize and enhance that experience, the company wanted to develop Connect, an omnichannel digital selling application that would empower associates to view rich, personalized customer information with the goal of making each customer interaction unforgettable. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many retail stores to close, the company’s sales moved exclusively online. To continue providing the hallmark experience that had always attracted customers, Neiman Marcus needed to launch Connect quickly to enable associates to perform digital selling. Choosing a serverless architecture with mobile development solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS) enabled the development team to launch the app much faster than in the 4 months it had originally planned. “Using AWS cloud-native and serverless technologies, we increased our speed to market by at least 50 percent and were able to accelerate the launch of Connect,” says Sriram Vaidyanathan, senior director of omni engineering at Neiman Marcus. This approach also greatly reduced app-building costs and provided developers with more agility for the development and rapid deployment of updates. The app elastically scales to support traffic at any volume for greater cost efficiency, and it has increased associate productivity. Using AWS Amplify on a serverless architecture cost us 90 percent less than if we had built the app using a more traditional method. This is a huge win for us.” Hemanth Jayaraman Senior Director of Cloud Engineering, Neiman Marcus Empowering Associates to Elevate the Customer Experience Neiman Marcus is the flagship brand of the Neiman Marcus Group, a luxury retail organization founded in 1907 and generating $2.6 billion in annual revenue from its subsidiaries. Before Neiman Marcus developed Connect, associates were using an assortment of tools and technologies to provide customer service. Each solution provided a different piece of information an associate needed to generate a sale. Some of these solutions were outdated, and all of them were creating friction. As a result, they were increasing sell times and decreasing associate productivity. The development team set out to create an app that would aggregate a comprehensive range of customer data and present it in one place. The team had three goals in mind: to increase productivity, support omnichannel selling, and empower associates to deepen customer relationships. Neiman Marcus was eager to resolve the challenges that associates were facing and to deliver on its white-glove customer experience. When stores closed, the company’s preexisting plans for launching and implementing the app were significantly accelerated. “Additional pressure mounted on our team to roll out the new application. We had to go to market double quick—and we were able to do it with the technical foundation we had in place and with the right set of tools and tech,” says Vaidyanathan. Building Serverless Apps with Speed To speed up its app development time, the Neiman Marcus team chose to build on a serverless architecture using AWS Amplify, a set of tools and services that front-end web and mobile developers can use to build scalable full-stack applications powered by AWS. The team quickly configured the app using AWS Amplify workflows, then connected the app to the backend by using open-source client libraries. It used AWS Amplify to set up secure authentication and authorization flows for sign-up, sign-in, and access controls, with a fully managed user directory powered by Amazon Cognito, a user directory service that handles registration, authentication, and account recovery. A key functional component in the design of the serverless architecture was AWS AppSync, a fully managed service that simplifies the development of GraphQL APIs. GraphQL enables client apps to efficiently fetch, change, and subscribe to data from servers, and AWS AppSync helps Neiman Marcus specify which portions of its data should be available by using GraphQL subscriptions, simple statements in the application code that tell the service which data to update in real time. GraphQL subscriptions support a key application use case: they enable customers and associates to subscribe to various notifications, such as notifications  that let them know when a desired product becomes available for sale. The closure of retail locations due to the COVID-19 pandemic was a true test of the development team’s agility in responding to urgent new challenges. “As a development team for a recognizable brand name, it’s essential that we set ourselves up to swiftly support the business when its needs change,” says Vaidyanathan. “By building Connect using AWS Amplify and AWS AppSync as quickly as we did, we were able to prove that we are in a position to do just that.” In addition to moving quickly, Neiman Marcus also saves money on AWS because it only pays for the resources it uses. “Using AWS Amplify on a serverless architecture cost us 90 percent less than if we had built the app using a more traditional method. This is a huge win for us,” says Hemanth Jayaraman, senior director of cloud engineering at Neiman Marcus. Serverless architecture also enables Neiman Marcus to elastically scale the app to quickly meet demand. Elasticity is crucial to retail companies, which regularly experience bursts of traffic during promotions, popular shopping hours, weekends, and holiday seasons. The engineering team uses AWS Lambda—a serverless compute service that automatically runs code without requiring developers to provision or manage infrastructure—for compute power and automatic scaling. Once the development team writes and uploads code, AWS Lambda automatically and precisely allocates compute execution power and runs the code based on incoming requests or events for any scale of traffic. Driving Success on the Sales Floor Neiman Marcus is seeing improvements in associate productivity since rolling out Connect. Associates can now engage with customers and assist them from anywhere—a high-touch selling approach that was not available before. “We wanted Connect to be the ultimate tool in an associate’s arsenal that enabled them to manage their client relationships efficiently while increasing their own productivity,” says Vaidyanathan. “Our associates now have everything they need in one place to provide excellent customer service.” The app also tracks associate key performance indicators. As a result, Connect is incentivizing associates because they can view their sales performance in real time. The development team is also exploring new capabilities for Connect, such as solutions that will enable associates and supervisors to track targets. With access to information based on data and intelligence, associates can manage their client relationships more effectively using Connect. Overall, associates have taken very well to Connect. “Engagement has been strong,  especially when we shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Connect was one of the few avenues associates could use to continue serving customers,” Vaidyanathan says. “The app has evolved the way our associates engage with customers, and our relationships with customers have grown much deeper as a result. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome from building this solution on AWS.” About Neiman Marcus A well-known name in luxury retail, Neiman Marcus operates 38 US department stores and a premier digital service for customers around the world. It is the flagship brand of the Neiman Marcus Group, founded in 1907. Benefits of AWS Reduced development costs by 90% Increased speed to market by 50% Increased developer velocity Improved elasticity Improved agility AWS Services Used AWS Amplify AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that can be used together or on their own, to help front-end web and mobile developers build scalable full stack applications, powered by AWS. Learn more » AWS AppSync Organizations choose to build APIs with GraphQL because it helps them develop applications faster, by giving front-end developers the ability to query multiple databases, microservices, and APIs with a single GraphQL endpoint. Learn more » Amazon Cognito Amazon Cognito lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily. Amazon Cognito scales to millions of users and supports sign-in with social identity providers, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect. Learn more » AWS Lambda AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, creating workload-aware cluster scaling logic, maintaining event integrations, or managing runtimes. Learn more » Get Started Companies of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS Cloud journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it

Delivering Video at Scale in Mobile and Web Applications with Orangetheory Fitness | Front-End Web & Mobile Skip to Main Content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App AWS Blog Home Blogs Editions Close Architecture AWS Cloud Operations & Migrations AWS for Games AWS Insights AWS Marketplace AWS News AWS Partner Network AWS Smart Business Big Data Business Intelligence Business Productivity Cloud Enterprise Strategy Cloud Financial Management Compute Contact Center Containers Database Desktop & Application Streaming Developer Tools DevOps Front-End Web & Mobile HPC IBM and Red Hat Industries Integration & Automation Internet of Things Machine Learning Media Messaging & Targeting Microsoft Workloads on AWS .NET on AWS Networking & Content Delivery Open Source Public Sector Quantum Computing Robotics SAP Security Spatial Computing Startups Storage Supply Chain & Logistics Training & Certification Close 中国版 日本版 한국 에디션 기술 블로그 Edisi Bahasa Indonesia AWS Thai Blog Édition Française Deutsche Edition Edição em Português Edición en Español Версия на русском Türkçe Sürüm Front-End Web & Mobile Delivering Video at Scale in Mobile and Web Applications with Orangetheory Fitness by Nader Dabit | on 14 JUL 2020 | in AWS Amplify, AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaStore , Customer Solutions, Front-End Web & Mobile, Media Services, Top Posts | Permalink | Comments | Share This post was written by Ashwin Raghuraman, Solutions Architect, AWS and Pedro C. González, Enterprise Solutions Architect, Orangetheory Fitness Orangetheory Fitness is a health and fitness company that combines science, coaching and technology to create maximum results for their customers from heart rate based workouts.  Using a formula that combines heart rate metrics and a proprietary fitness indicator, the Orangetheory Fitness interval training is designed to burn more calories post workout than a traditional exercise regime. Orangetheory Fitness helps its customers achieve tangible and data driven health outcomes using insights derived from IoT heart rate devices. Since its 2010 launch, Orangetheory Fitness has grown rapidly and now has over 1,200 studios located across all 50 U.S. states and 23 countries. As of 2020, Orangetheory Fitness has over one million members and surpassed $1 billion in global sales. Impacts of an Unexpected Challenge With the onset of the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, businesses such as Orangetheory Fitness were required to close their in-person operations, making activities such as a going to the gym a challenge. As a result, Orangetheory Fitness had to create new ways to engage with their customers in order to keep their businesses open. The Orangetheory Fitness team, which prides itself on being customer centric, quickly formulated a strategy to create full video workouts so their customers could continue with the Orangetheory Fitness heart based workouts at home. The Orangetheory Fitness engineering and development team explored opportunities to build and deliver “at home” experiences over the web, but weren’t finding solutions that could be implemented quickly and at scale. Building a video processing pipeline is a complex task, one that often requires video-specific expertise. In addition to highly specific expertise, internet based video delivery can consume a significant amount of development time and resources to create backend code for high quality performance. The Orangetheory Fitness team driving the overall initiative was made up of Kirk Peart, Director of Technology, Pedro C. González, Enterprise Solutions Architect and the mobile development team including William Taylor, Senior Android SW Engineer and Senior iOS SW Engineers Doug Ross, Tanvir Shirazi, and Igor Shashkov, plus Adam Goldstein, Senior Project Manager, and Cortlin Dunlevy, Technical Business Analyst.  The team knew they didn’t have the luxury of time to build their own video processing and delivery solution so they called their AWS account team to discuss alternative options. The discussion with AWS focused on the fact that Orangetheory Fitness needed the fastest time to market and a production ready, highly scalable solution for their video workouts. Easy-to-Use and Scalable Video Solution for Web and Mobile Applications The AWS team recommended that Orangetheory Fitness leverage AWS Amplify and Amplify Video as a means to bring their video workouts to their application. AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that enables mobile and frontend web developers to build secure, scalable fullstack applications. AWS Amplify creates a faster path to market for frontend and web developers because it creates an abstraction layer which encapsulates the functionality of several AWS services. Amplify provides a process of creating AWS infrastructure, based on best practices, so developers can deploy production-scale infrastructure based on their chosen configuration details. This increases speed to market by decreasing development time and allowing businesses like Orangetheory Fitness to focus on enhancing their end-user experience rather than the underlying technology used to build it. Amplify Video is an open source plugin that simplifies the development of serverless, video-enabled, web and mobile applications. It provides two video resource types backed by AWS Elemental Media Services and Amazon Cloudfront. One for live streaming and another for Video on Demand. Video on Demand Orangetheory Fitness used the Video on Demand resource to deploy an architecture comprising of two S3 buckets; one for content ingestion and another where processed media is hosted. When a new asset is uploaded to the ingest S3 bucket, an AWS Lambda function is scheduled to extract content metadata and submit a job to Amazon Elemental MediaConvert for transcoding into an Adaptive Bitrate (ABR). Adaptive bitrate streaming is a family of protocols that stream segmented media and adapt to the client requirements with multiple rendition streams, each with different resolution, bitrate, and quality settings. This ensures the best possible experience regardless of network and client conditions. Content delivery is optimized by Amazon CloudFront to improve performance for viewers and protected with CloudFront signed-urls. To aid in operations, Orangetheory Fitness built custom notifications around the pipeline to notify engineers and their marketing teams when content was ready to publish. Orangetheory Fitness coined the new product as OrangetheoryAtHome™ and produced an architecture incorporating video along with the critical capability to scale video to their member base of over 1 million users. Orangetheory Fitness Enterprise Solutions Architect Pedro González recounts that “From the time AWS pointed me to the Video plugin code repository and the Amplify CLI, the initial setup was under an hour. We didn’t require any changes to our native iOS/Android code, we simply replaced the backend and the Amplify video plugin did the work.” Orangetheory Fitness Architecture The Orangetheory Fitness team estimates that to build and troubleshoot the solution on their own would have taken a full week of dedicated engineering and developer time. In contrast, by using Amplify Video, they transcoded the video, generated signed urls, and deployed it to their development environment and then into production – all within an hour. “It was a tremendous success for our team to have the capability available so quickly. We were able to hand off to the frontend development team so they could embed into the app and build our proprietary workout telemetry around it. We had an incredibly fast turnaround cycle with development and QA to build an integrated app experience with the AtHome video content. Our studios closed on March 13th and we launched AtHome in our application on March 21st.” stated González. Orangetheory Fitness Delivers for their Customers with OrangetheoryAtHome™ Video OrangetheoryAtHome™ provides members with a custom video experience that is integrated with heart rate analytics to calculate and display personalized workout statistics straight through the video player. Running workouts now added to OrangetheoryAtHome “The number of members using the videos has been incredible, we have had over 8 million views across platforms with 1.7million views of content in the application. One unexpected result has been an increase in heart rate monitor sales as customers want to continue to reach their fitness goals while using the OrangetheoryAtHome video content. Additionally, using Amplify has allowed us to expand our offering to include running programs through our app. For example, we have a feature where the app can detect if the user needs a video stream for an AtHome workout or an mp3 file download for a running workout” said González. The Orangetheory Fitness team was able to solve for this complex challenge to keep their customers motivated and working out. González concluded “Our focus was ensuring that our customers could continue their workouts during this stressful time so we were very pleased to have found AWS Amplify and Amplify Video.” AWS Amplify and Amplify Video Designed for Speed and Ease-of-Use The Amplify Framework consists of 3 components including libraries, UI components, and CLI toolchain. Components can be used together or on their own. Organized by use case, Amplify Libraries and UI components are powered by AWS services. They are open source and work with front-end frameworks (React, React Native, Angular, Vue, Ionic) and iOS/Android IDEs. The Amplify Command Line Interface (CLI) is a toolchain to create and maintain serverless backends on AWS. A resource of AWS Amplify,  Amplify Video deploys AWS services that are managed in the same, developer-friendly Amplify Framework. Application developers start with Amplify Video by issuing a simple command to add a ‘Video’ resource to an Amplify project. Next, they configure the Video resource as Live or Video-On-Demand (VOD) with options that are pragmatic by default, but extensible for experts. Using the Amplify CLI, advanced developers can easily extend this existing schema to include their own data without leaving their Amplify Project. As another example, Amplify Video configures AWS MediaConvert, a file-based media transcoding service, with defaults based on general best practices, however developers can explicitly provide their own encoding settings within their project. Helpful Resources: AWS Amplify and Get Started Tutorial. Amplify Video plugin walkthrough – configuring your environment and creating your first project. Amplify Video source code is available publicly on Github along with documentation on getting started with Video on Demand. Members of the open source developer community are encouraged to submit pull requests, cut issues, as well as document feature requests as a means of contributing to Amplify Video. Comments View Comments Resources AWS AppSync AWS Device Farm Amazon Pinpoint AWS Amplify Follow AWS for Mobile Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Twitch Email Updates Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

QsrSoft Case Study Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App QsrSoft Helps McDonald’s and Other Restaurants Engage Employees Using QsrSoft TV Developed on AWS 2022 Software provider QsrSoft wanted to support its customers in the restaurant and hospitality industries by addressing labor shortages and employee turnover through development of its new product, QsrSoft TV, an interactive solution that helps restaurants engage with their employees, communicate with staff, and work toward common objectives in near real time. To improve its product, the company wanted to provide more customizable features and accelerate time to market. QsrSoft collaborated alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS) to rethink its QsrSoft TV solution, using services like AWS Amplify—a set of purpose-built tools and features that helps front-end web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack serverless applications on AWS. Within 3 months, and with a team of two engineers, the company launched the new QsrSoft TV solution as an application that is available on Amazon Fire TV Sticks and added additional components, such as gamification, automated alerts, and instant messaging. Since making these changes, the company has implemented QsrSoft TV at several restaurant and hospitality businesses, including McDonald’s. We can think bigger and more creatively working on AWS. We have a much better product because of our ability to innovate.” Adam Pehas Director of Development, QsrSoft Using “Working Backwards” to Accelerate Its Product Development on AWS QsrSoft designs software and applications that provide back-office support, promote operational excellence, and simplify reporting and analytics for businesses within the hospitality, restaurant, and retail industries. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company realized that its customers were facing challenges in retaining and motivating their workforces, and it wanted to provide resources that would help fill this gap. One of the company’s legacy solutions was a restaurant dashboard, a digital solution that facilitates locational and company-wide messaging across the front lines in near real time. “We knew that we wanted to evolve that tool to be something greater than it was,” says John Witherspoon, product lead at QsrSoft. “Through our conversations with restaurant operators, we knew that there was a high level of interest.” QsrSoft started using AWS in 2015, and over time, the company has gained tremendous confidence in using AWS services while realizing a massive growth in its customer base. “QsrSoft couldn’t be happier using AWS,” says Tim Burge, chief executive officer at QsrSoft. “We went all in on the cloud as a part of our growth strategy, and it has truly paid off. We’ve cut compute costs and have been quicker to market, and we can respond to customer requests much more rapidly.” From that point, the company decided to go all in on AWS, using serverless solutions to quickly launch new products. While reinventing its restaurant dashboard into QsrSoft TV, the company adopted the “Working Backwards” mechanism, an Amazon process that encourages companies to brainstorm solutions by using a customer challenge as the starting point. Companies identify their customers’ needs and then work backward to create new products and services. Simplifying Setup and Increasing Customer Satisfaction While adopting the “Working Backwards” mechanism, QsrSoft reimagined its product using Amazon Fire TV Sticks, which are all-in-one remotes that are compatible with high-definition TVs. “Using Amazon Fire TV Sticks contributes massively to our low barrier to entry and frictionless experience,” says Witherspoon. “It’s a plug-and-play scenario and an affordable device.” Now, it takes restaurants only 3 minutes to configure a QsrSoft TV. QsrSoft also decided to take a serverless approach to drive agility and increase cost savings, and it chose to use AWS Amplify for application development. The company built a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service that helps developers run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. It also adopted AWS AppSync, a fully managed service that makes it easy to develop GraphQL APIs by handling the heavy lifting of securely connecting to data sources like AWS Lambda and other AWS services. To deliver its QsrSoft TV application to restaurants, it uses AWS Amplify Hosting, which provides fast, secure, and reliable hosting for modern web apps, powered by AWS Amplify. By going serverless on AWS, QsrSoft’s development team can focus on high-value tasks and brainstorm new ways to add value to the company’s products and services. With a scalable, fully serverless application stack, the company can deliver QsrSoft TV to customers without extensive preparation or managing infrastructure. In the first week of rolling out its new solution, QsrSoft onboarded 100 locations, and within 6 months, it onboarded over 1,000 locations. “We can think bigger and more creatively working on AWS,” says Adam Pehas, director of development at QsrSoft. “We have a much better product because of our ability to innovate.” QsrSoft also uses Amazon DynamoDB—a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at virtually any scale. Using AWS Amplify and Amazon DynamoDB, the company has built a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline, automating steps in its software delivery process. With this pipeline in place, its developers have added features, such as gamification, automated alerts, and instant messaging. Because near-real-time messaging is at the core of its new solution, QsrSoft’s customers can immediately communicate important goals to team members. Additionally, going serverless has helped the company deliver new updates to customers even faster than before. “We will hear from customers about capabilities or features that they want to use in the field,” says Pehas. “Oftentimes, we’ve pushed that update or feature out by the end of the same business day.” With the rollout of new features, QsrSoft has seen significant levels of customer satisfaction. Many restaurants have adopted this solution, and some have experienced a significant reduction in employee turnover. Some of its customers have also seen up to a 25 percent improvement in key performance areas, such as sales and service times. One McDonald’s franchisee, for instance, has seen an increase of over 1,100 percent in funds raised for its Ronald McDonald House Charities using QsrSoft TV’s gamification features. Moreover, QsrSoft designed its QsrSoft TV solution to be fully customizable, meaning that businesses can adjust the functionalities based on their specific needs. “Using QsrSoft TV lets our customers gamify and communicate throughout their organizations, which increases throughput, sales, and profitability,” says Tammy Johnston, deployment lead of QsrSoft TV at QsrSoft. “Our customers reach out and tell us their successes, which in turn are our successes.” Expanding Its Footprint on AWS to Deliver Immediate Updates Currently, QsrSoft is working on adding more channels and streaming content on its QsrSoft TV. The company also plans to expand its footprint on AWS and continue to iterate new versions and updates for QsrSoft TV. “QsrSoft is an organization that prides itself on gathering customer feedback and delivering immediate enhancements and features,” says Witherspoon. “We’re nimble and can anticipate a lot of our customers’ needs because of the architecture that we have built on AWS.” About QsrSoft Founded in 2004, QsrSoft designs software and applications that provide back-office support, promote operational excellence, and simplify reporting. It serves businesses of all sizes within the hospitality, restaurant, and retail industries. Benefits of AWS Redesigned QsrSoft TV in only 3 months with a team of two developers Onboarded 100 locations within 1 week Onboarded over 1,000 locations within 6 months Added gamification, automatic alerts, and instant messaging Decreased time spent configuring QsrSoft TV to 3 minutes Built a CI/CD pipeline, freeing up time for developers to focus on high-value tasks Increased customer satisfaction AWS Services Used AWS Amplify AWS Amplify is a set of purpose-built tools and features that lets frontend web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack applications on AWS, with the flexibility to leverage the breadth of AWS services as your use cases evolve. Learn more » AWS AppSync AWS AppSync is a fully managed service that makes it easy to develop GraphQL APIs by handling the heavy lifting of securely connecting to data sources like AWS DynamoDB, Lambda, and more. Learn more » Amazon DynamoDB Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. Learn more » 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. Learn more » Get Started Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it

State Auto Case Study | AWS Amplify | AWS Skip to main content Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage About AWS Contact Us Support English My Account Sign In Create an AWS Account Products Solutions Pricing Documentation Learn Partner Network AWS Marketplace Customer Enablement Events Explore More Close عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Close My Profile Sign out of AWS Builder ID AWS Management Console Account Settings Billing & Cost Management Security Credentials AWS Personal Health Dashboard Close Support Center Expert Help Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview AWS re:Post Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage Get Started for Free Contact Us Products Solutions Pricing Introduction to AWS Getting Started Documentation Training and Certification Developer Center Customer Success Partner Network AWS Marketplace Support AWS re:Post Log into Console Download the Mobile App State Auto Cuts Production Time to a Day Using AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify 2021 State Automobile Mutual Insurance Company (State Auto), a property and casualty insurer operating in 33 US states, provides insurance products covering personal, commercial, farm and ranch, and workers’ compensation risks. In 2019, State Auto decided to create a cloud-native version of its traditional technology stack using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Using AWS services, State Auto built an application that fosters a culture of innovation and improves the user experience for insurance agents and their customers. “We are in a large-scale transformation, and the capabilities that AWS offers make our lives simpler,” says Ramu Lingala, chief technology officer of State Auto. “We’re changing the culture of how we develop and deploy software and continuously evolve. Using AWS services, we’ve been able to increase our developer velocity without building additional infrastructure. The services made it simple to adapt and learn.” “There are many efficiencies in how using AWS AppSync lets us deliver front-end solutions in a dynamic, reactive, and evolving way.” Mark Skaggs Information Technology Director of Platform Engineering, State Automobile Mutual Insurance Company Experiencing Slow Production on Existing Systems State Auto sells insurance products through independent agents and agencies that sell State Auto products through their own systems. For years, State Auto used a traditional three-tier architecture: on the front end, a web application with JavaScript frameworks supporting browser development; various middle-tier components; and core business systems and supporting databases on the backend. When State Auto released a new product on the three-tier system, the process required hundreds of developers and took months to complete. Developers used more than 85 environments to develop, test, and deploy changes. “The effort to test and deploy updates was very challenging,” says Mark Skaggs, information technology director of platform engineering at State Auto. “It was difficult to manage and maintain consistent velocity with quality.” Having used AWS for years, State Auto decided to use AWS tools to develop solution patterns. “Guided by AWS, we gained a better understanding of cloud-native tooling,” says Skaggs. “We were able to understand how to look at business problems, break them down, and approach them with appropriate technical solutions.” Then, directly inspired by an AWS Digital Innovation workshop, State Auto launched its SA360 initiative and built a new version of its web application. “The workshop taught the ‘Working Backwards’ mechanism and shared how using AWS services to develop products not only drives innovation and an innovative culture but also helps small teams implement product development,” continued Skaggs. Facilitating Relationships with Customers through AWS Services State Auto built a new version of its web application using AWS Amplify, a set of tools and services to help front-end web and mobile developers build scalable full-stack applications powered by AWS. The modernized application changes how agents use, view, and interact with data. “We’ve given agents another tool that is better, faster, simpler, and more intuitive to use,” says Skaggs. Additionally, State Auto is using Amazon Connect, a simple-to-use omnichannel cloud contact center that helps users provide superior customer service at a lower cost. The new application, used alongside Amazon Connect, has reduced the number of billing-related calls to State Auto’s customer service department by 27 percent, based on internal data collected. By seeing the right information at the right moment, insurance agents can help insureds faster. “The whole idea is to make it simpler for agents to support insureds so that they can build an intimate relationship with their customers in a more comfortable way,” says Skaggs. To accelerate the application’s development, State Auto used AWS AppSync, a fully managed service that makes it simple to develop GraphQL APIs by handling the heavy lifting of securely connecting to data sources directly or using AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service that lets companies run code without provisioning or managing servers. “There are many efficiencies in how using AWS AppSync lets us deliver front-end solutions in a dynamic, reactive, and evolving way,” says Skaggs. Because AWS AppSync is a managed GraphQL service and provides developers the flexibility to fetch only the data required for a view in the application, it has, based on internal data, reduced the amount of data going from the backend system to the browser. Based on internal metrics, this resulted in faster response times, which improve agent productivity and ultimately benefit State Auto customers. AWS AppSync connects to Amazon DynamoDB, a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale, which means developers code less. “The more developers’ hands are removed from keyboards in creating a solution, the less chance of introducing errors and the quicker a solution goes to market,” explains Skaggs. Now State Auto’s development teams are smaller, with five or six people. Based on internal metrics, production time decreased from months to as little as 24 hours, so State Auto can release new features weekly or even daily. The company receives immediate feedback from its users and can adapt more quickly to their needs. “Our developers are free to take on new work for the same customer for the same product,” says Skaggs. “They become very efficient in delivering capabilities. When they finish one, they just pick up the next and start developing.” Pursuing a Culture of Innovation on AWS On AWS, State Auto created a modernized web application that provides a simpler and faster experience for thousands of insurance agents, helping them to better serve their customers. State Auto also built an external rating system for customer quotes using a serverless pattern that uses multiple AWS services: AWS API Gateway, a fully managed service that makes it simple for developers to create, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale; AWS Lambda alongside AWS Step Functions, a serverless function orchestrator; and Amazon DynamoDB. Based on internal data, this solution decreased quote response time from 5–25 seconds to 200 ms. “By using AWS, we are changing the way we think about solving business problems and about continuous evolution and improvement,” says Skaggs. “It’s not just about the technology or the cloud. It’s about State Auto delivering timely solutions to satisfy what customers want when they want it.” About State Automobile Insurance Company Founded in 1921, regional property casualty insurer State Automobile Mutual Insurance Company provides insurance in nine lines of business, including auto, home, and commercial. Serving 33 US states, it has assets of $4.6 billion and writes $2 billion in premiums. Benefits of AWS Reduced teams of developers from hundreds to five or six Decreased production time from months to as little as 24 hours, based on internal State Auto data Reduced number of customer service calls by 27%, based on internal State Auto data Reduced amount of data going from the backend system to browsers Helped developers code less AWS Services Used AWS Amplify AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that can be used together or on their own, to help front-end web and mobile developers build scalable full stack applications, powered by AWS. Learn more » AWS AppSync Organizations choose to build APIs with GraphQL because it helps them develop applications faster, by giving front-end developers the ability to query multiple databases, microservices, and APIs with a single GraphQL endpoint. Learn more » AWS Lambda AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, creating workload-aware cluster scaling logic, maintaining event integrations, or managing runtimes. Learn more » Amazon DynamoDB Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. DynamoDB offers built-in security, continuous backups, automated multi-region replication, in-memory caching, and data export tools. Learn more » Get Started Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today. Contact Sales Sign In to the Console Learn About AWS What Is AWS? What Is Cloud Computing? AWS Accessibility AWS Inclusion, Diversity & Equity What Is DevOps? What Is a Container? What Is a Data Lake? What is Generative AI? AWS Cloud Security What's New Blogs Press Releases Resources for AWS Getting Started Training and Certification AWS Solutions Library Architecture Center Product and Technical FAQs Analyst Reports AWS Partners Developers on AWS Developer Center SDKs & Tools .NET on AWS Python on AWS Java on AWS PHP on AWS JavaScript on AWS Help Contact Us Get Expert Help File a Support Ticket AWS re:Post Knowledge Center AWS Support Overview Legal AWS Careers Create an AWS Account Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age. Language عربي Bahasa Indonesia Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe Ρусский ไทย 日本語 한국어 中文 (简体) 中文 (繁體) Privacy | Accessibility | Site Terms | Cookie Preferences | © 2024, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ending Support for Internet Explorer Got it AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Learn more » Got it