World Wide Technology (WWT) is a global technology services provider based in St. Louis, Missouri specializing in enterprise architecture, IT services, and digital strategy. They have a large footprint across the U.S. deploying technology solutions and custom application development to businesses needing digital innovation.
In 2018 WWT set out to modernize their infrastructure and application development environments. As they evaluated technologies for this modernization effort, WWT looked to Kubernetes as their cloud native infrastructure abstraction. In selecting a database technology for this new cloud native infrastructure, WWT selected Crunchy Postgres for Kubernetes as the best combination open source RDBMS and Kubernetes native implementation.
WWT has partnered with Crunchy Data to successfully deploy Crunchy PostgreSQL for Kubernetes across a variety of applications and use cases.
Diversifying with Open Source
In delivering technology services globally to large commercial enterprises and government agencies, WWT partners with technology providers for hardware and enterprise software. WWT has traditionally leaned on closed source databases for their feature set and reliability. As they evaluated new technologies to modernize their infrastructure, they looked at a wide variety of open source data management technologies and ultimately selected Postgres for its feature parity with the database technologies they have used historically.
WWT is a 30 year old company and we’ve grown tremendously. We’re now a 15B company. As we think about the big picture now, Postgres is part of that picture because of its flexibility, scalability and reliability.
Michael McDonaghProduct Owner, WWT
The value of the Crunchy Postgres Operator
WWT orchestrates a large footprint of on-premise infrastructure and has been modernizing with Kubernetes. As they modernize this infrastructure, they are developing microservice based architectures that enable application developers to self-serve these services. This helps keep costs in-line while allowing them to operate projects individually.
With Oracle as the only previous alternative, MongoDB became our default database for custom application development. With Crunchy Data, we finally have a relational database option that easily integrates into our dev stack.
Marc DeSantisSoftare Development Director, WWT
In looking into their modernization efforts around databases, WWT knew they wanted to run Postgres with Kubernetes. WWT teams take advantage of the Kubernetes Operators tools in different areas, like in their SRE team deploying and monitoring clusters, their DevOps team on controlling user access and resources.
WWT evaluated the landscape of technologies for deploying and managing Postgres on Kubernetes, including the Operator pattern for Kubernetes. As WWT explored the various options they determined that Crunchy Postgres for Kubernetes provided the benefits of an open source software solution combined with a trusted partner in Crunchy Data to provide enterprise distribution, support and maintenance.
Selecting Crunchy Data as our PostgreSQL vendor became clear upon evaluating the Crunchy Postgres Operator. The Postgres Operator hit on all the major deliverables we were looking for in being able to deploy PostgreSQL as a service to our stakeholders. Seamless upgrades, high availability, simple provisioning, backups, and DR options are some of the things that enabled us to offer a well-rounded and versatile service that included developing supplemental automations to simplify the consumption and onboarding process for our custom apps and enterprise software that uses an external PG across the enterprise.
Kris ReeseTeam Lead, WWT
Using Crunchy Postgres for Kubernetes, WWT has built an internal database services panel that allows teams to request and deploy Postgres.
Growing the possibilities of Postgres
Using this new on-demand Postgres environment, WWT teams are moving existing projects and building greenfield applications to modern database infrastructure. As developers, SREs, and architects learn more about the capabilities of Postgres, the internal enthusiasm around these teams grows.
Our developers are excited about Postgres. It's starting to really take off. We have been able to show a lot of the similarities between Crunchy and Oracle. How similar the syntax is.
Michael McDonaghProduct Owner, WWT
WWT and Crunchy Data are working together to spread internal education on Postgres, including an internal Postgres road show to train internal teams on using Postgres.