Prison Fellowship achieved lightning-fast environment setups and Developer independence with Qovery!

#Key Results

• Reduced environment setup time from days to minutes
• Eliminated manual deployment processes by automating EKS cluster upgrades and removing reliance on complex runbooks.
• Improved log visibility and system monitoring, leading to faster troubleshooting and reduced downtime.
• Freed infrastructure team resources allowing the infrastructure team to focus on modernization efforts and strategic priorities.
• Improved Developer autonomy to independently create and manage test environments, reducing dependencies on DevOps.

#Overview

Prison Fellowship, a leading non-profit organization focused on justice reform and prisoner rehabilitation, faced significant challenges in modernizing their legacy infrastructure. A manual deployment process involving EC2 instances and complex runbooks was consuming valuable resources and limiting their agility.

To overcome these challenges, Prison Fellowship partnered with Qovery to simplify their infrastructure, accelerate environment setups, and empower their developers. By automating key processes and eliminating bottlenecks, Qovery enabled Prison Fellowship to focus on their mission-critical goals while reducing operational overhead.

#The Challenge

Prison Fellowship faced significant hurdles in their deployment and infrastructure processes, rooted in a legacy system that struggled to meet the demands of a modern development workflow. Following a lift-and-shift migration to the cloud three years ago, their setup was built on manual deployments to EC2 instances, which introduced inefficiencies and operational bottlenecks.

#Inefficient Deployment Processes

Deployments took over two hours, involving manual database updates, code pushes, and reliance on lengthy, intricate runbooks. These processes not only consumed valuable time but also increased the likelihood of errors during deployments.

#Slow Environment Provisioning

Setting up new environments was a time-intensive task, often taking several days. This delay hindered development and testing cycles, creating roadblocks for innovation and timely delivery.

#Outdated Workflows with Limited Automation

The lack of automated deployment workflows left developers heavily dependent on the infrastructure team. Routine tasks, such as updating Helm charts or managing pipelines, required DevOps involvement, creating unnecessary bottlenecks.

#Reduced Developer Autonomy

Developers lacked the ability to independently create or manage test environments. This dependency on the infrastructure team further delayed development efforts and reduced overall team productivity.

As Kevin Spears, Infrastructure Manager at Prison Fellowship, shared:

“Our deployment process was outdated and time-consuming. Even small changes required significant manual effort, which slowed us down and took focus away from our mission.”

These challenges underscored the need for a more efficient and scalable solution—one that could reduce manual effort, empower developers, and accelerate workflows.

#The Solution: Partnering with Qovery

Qovery provided an end-to-end solution that addressed Prison Fellowship’s infrastructure challenges by abstracting the complexities of Kubernetes and AWS.

#key features that made a difference

• Environment Cloning
  Qovery’s GUI allows developers at Prison Fellowship to create isolated test environments without needing to build or manage complex pipelines or Helm charts. This reduced environment setup time from days to minutes, enabling faster iterations and increased autonomy for the development team.
• Direct Kubernetes Access via EKS
  Qovery’s foundation on Amazon EKS provided flexibility for Prison Fellowship’s engineering team to troubleshoot infrastructure directly using kubectl when needed.
• Log Visibility
  Improved log accessibility within Qovery allowed Kevin’s team to better monitor system performance and troubleshoot issues effectively, reducing time spent on diagnosing deployment errors.
• Automated EKS Cluster Upgrades:
  Qovery automated the management of EKS clusters, eliminating the need for manual interventions and maintenance tasks. This was particularly valuable for the infrastructure team, freeing resources to focus on other priorities.

#Results & Outcomes

#Drastically reduced setup times

Environment setup time was reduced from multiple days to just minutes, enabling the team to focus on development rather than infrastructure management. This accelerated deployment cycles and supported faster delivery of new features.

#Improved reliability & Efficiency

Automated upgrades and better log visibility improved system reliability, reducing downtime and operational overhead. Kevin’s team experienced fewer deployment issues, resulting in a more stable infrastructure.

#Enhanced developer autonomy

Developers became more self-sufficient, creating and managing their own environments without DevOps intervention. This increased productivity across the team and reduced bottlenecks.

#Optimized Resource Allocation

By automating routine infrastructure tasks, the engineering team could redirect efforts towards strategic projects.

#Conclusion

By partnering with Qovery, Prison Fellowship successfully modernized their infrastructure, reducing environment setup times, empowering developers, and streamlining operations. These improvements have allowed their team to focus on mission-critical work while confidently embracing new modernization initiatives.

“Qovery was a game-changer for us. It simplified our infrastructure, freed up our resources, and enabled us to move faster than ever.” — Kevin Spears, Infrastructure Manager at Prison Fellowship

#About Kevin Spears

Kevin Spears is the Infrastructure Manager at Prison Fellowship, overseeing cloud infrastructure and modernization efforts. His focus is on building scalable, efficient systems that support the organization’s mission to transform lives.

#About Prison Fellowship

Prison Fellowship is the largest Christian non-profit organization serving prisoners, former prisoners, and their families. With a mission to transform the justice system and foster hope, the organization provides programs aimed at rehabilitation, education, and reentry support.

#About Qovery

Qovery is an all-in-one DevOps automation platform that simplifies cloud infrastructure management on AWS, GCP, and Azure. By abstracting the complexities of Kubernetes and cloud services, Qovery enables developers to deploy applications effortlessly.
Ready to see Qovery in action? Discover how Qovery can empower your team and simplify your deployment process. Schedule a Demo Today