Optimizing Infrastructure with DevOps and Automation for a Technology Firm

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TECHNOLOGY & SOFTWARE

Optimizing Infrastructure with DevOps and Automation for a Technology Firm

How Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) enables scalable and consistent cloud infrastructure management

Focus Areas

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

DevOps Enablement

Automation Strategy

Automated security scans and policy enforcement integrated into DevOps workflows

Business Problem

A fast-growing technology firm delivering B2B SaaS analytics platforms struggled with inconsistent infrastructure provisioning, high operational overhead, and rising cloud costs. Manual configurations and siloed infrastructure management resulted in delays during environment setup, poor scalability, and security risks. The leadership sought to implement a unified DevOps strategy to automate infrastructure operations, reduce cloud spend, and improve deployment agility across teams.

Key challenges:

  • Manual Provisioning: Environment creation and updates were handled manually, leading to errors and long lead times.

  • Infrastructure Drift: Inconsistent configurations between staging and production environments caused deployment failures.

  • Cloud Cost Spikes: Unoptimized workloads and idle resources inflated monthly cloud bills.

  • Security Risks: Lack of automated security policies and drift detection increased compliance concerns.

  • Limited Observability: Teams lacked unified metrics and visibility into infrastructure health or performance.

The Approach

Curate partnered with the technology firm to implement a cloud-native DevOps framework. By adopting Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automating resource provisioning, and integrating observability tools, Curate helped transform infrastructure operations into a scalable, cost-effective, and secure foundation for growth.

Key components of the solution:

Discovery and Requirements Gathering:

  • Current State Assessment: Reviewed existing environments, provisioning scripts, and cloud infrastructure design.

  • Pain Point Analysis: Mapped bottlenecks and misconfigurations impacting deployment velocity and cost.

  • Stakeholder Alignment: Conducted workshops with DevOps, engineering, and finance to align on objectives.

  • Security and Compliance Review: Evaluated IAM policies, audit trails, and cloud configurations for risks.

Solution Design and Implementation:

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

  • Standardized infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and modular templates.

  • Version-controlled environments with GitOps workflows via ArgoCD.

Automated Environment Provisioning

  • Provisioned dev, staging, and prod environments using automated pipelines triggered via CI/CD.

  • Integrated infrastructure validation tests and drift detection in pipelines.

Cloud Optimization

  • Implemented tagging, autoscaling groups, and lifecycle policies for resource right-sizing.

  • Integrated cost dashboards and alerting via AWS/GCP cost monitoring tools.

Security Automation

  • Embedded static analysis of IaC using Checkov and Terraform Sentinel.

  • Enforced policies with OPA/Gatekeeper and centralized secrets using Vault.

Process Optimization and Change Management:

  • Change Governance: Implemented change review workflows and PR-based infrastructure changes.

  • Documentation & Enablement: Created internal knowledge base and hosted live onboarding sessions.

  • Feedback Loops: Weekly retrospectives between DevOps and engineering teams for continuous improvement.

  • Monitoring Playbooks: Standardized alert response guides and remediation procedures.

Business Outcomes

Faster Infrastructure Provisioning


Environment setup times dropped from days to minutes, accelerating onboarding and deployments.

Improved Consistency and Security


IaC reduced drift and manual errors, while automated policy checks improved compliance posture.

Reduced Cloud Costs


Right-sizing and auto-scaling policies resulted in a double-digit percentage drop in monthly spend.

Sample KPIs

Here’s a quick summary of the kinds of KPI’s and goals teams were working towards**:

Metric Before After Improvement
Time to provision new environment 2-3 days 20 minutes 90% faster setup
Infrastructure drift incidents 10/month 1/month 90% reduction
Monthly cloud spend $180K $150K 17% cost reduction
Deployment lead times 6 hours 30 minutes 92% improvement
Security policy violations 8/month 1/month 87% reduction
**Disclaimer: The set of KPI’s are for illustration only and do not reference any specific client data or actual results – they have been modified and anonymized to protect confidentiality and avoid disclosing client data.

Customer Value

Scalable Infrastructure


Automated provisioning supports rapid growth and multi-region deployments.

DevOps Empowerment


Engineers gained control and visibility over infrastructure without compromising governance.

Sample Skills of Resources

  • Cloud Infrastructure Engineers: Designed scalable, modular Terraform architectures.

  • DevOps Engineers: Built automation pipelines and integrated observability tools.

  • Security Engineers: Defined policy-as-code rules and integrated static analysis tools.

  • SREs: Enhanced monitoring, alerting, and automated recovery procedures.

  • Program Managers: Drove change management, training, and cross-team adoption.

Tools & Technologies

  • IaC & Automation: Terraform, ArgoCD, Terragrunt

  • CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI

  • Cloud Providers: AWS, GCP, Azure

  • Monitoring & Logging: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, CloudWatch

  • Security & Compliance: Vault, Checkov, OPA, Sentinel

  • Cost Optimization: AWS Cost Explorer, GCP Billing, Kubecost

Visual representation of automated CI/CD pipeline streamlining

Conclusion

By automating and standardizing its infrastructure with DevOps best practices, the technology firm gained the agility, security, and efficiency needed to support rapid product innovation. Curate’s approach enabled the company to optimize cloud spend, improve infrastructure reliability, and empower teams through automation—laying the groundwork for scalable growth and continuous delivery.

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