“Having 600 pipelines to maintain is impossible, but with Codefresh we only have to manage a dozen or so”

“Codefresh has been very adaptable to our needs. It’s more than just a deployment tool. We’re finding so many uses to fit into our ways of working and simplify our daily life.” Kris Reese, Manager IT Platform Engineering

WWT IT used Codefresh to modernize without compromising the developer experience

World Wide Technology (WWT) is a global systems integrator that provides digital strategy, innovative technology, and supply chain solutions to large public and private organizations worldwide. Founded in 1990, the company employs over 9,000 people.

The team needed to modernize their deployment process while maintaining a positive developer experience. Though popular, their in-house deployment tool was difficult to maintain. WWT IT implemented Codefresh, which helped them transition to Kubernetes and adopt a GitOps approach.

Codefresh simplified maintenance by consolidating 600 pipelines into approximately a dozen while preserving familiar developer workflows. With Codefresh, WWT IT modernized its deployments without disrupting developers, offering more consistent and secure processes.

The technological backdrop

WWT IT has several teams, each with its own needs. Previously, they managed their deployments using an in-house custom tool coordinated through ServiceNow. Developers were familiar with this tool, but there were concerns about how to maintain it. The organization also wanted to move to Kubernetes deployments and needed a tool to support this.

Challenges

WWT IT needed a solution its developers would love

WWT IT’s internal tool worked, but teams faced a looming deadline for when it would break. Built on an older tech stack, it was difficult to maintain and was integrated into systems that they wanted to phase out. The team also wanted to explore modernizing their deployments and were exploring Argo CD. They decided it was time to replace their in-house tool with one that would help them modernize.

However, they had to balance their choice of tool with what their developers were used to. Their in-house tool was popular and worked, so it was important the change didn’t cause too much disruption for the developer teams. WWT IT needed a tool that would help it mature, be simple to maintain, and feel familiar for its developers.

“It wasn’t a matter of our solution being broken, but when it was going to break. Codefresh allowed us to modernize our processes, making maintenance easier all without taking features away that our developers loved.”

Kurt Pankau, Senior Developer

Solution

Codefresh helped WWT IT simplify and modernize its pipelines

WWT IT chose Codefresh because it integrated with its existing processes and helped to abstract its complex pipelines. It also let the team maintain the front-end of their in-house solution that developers were familiar with while modernizing their CI/CD pipeline. This meant an easier-to-maintain solution without compromising the developer experience. Using Codefresh also let them shift their deployments to Argo CD with expert support to ensure it worked as expected.

The team is also maturing its GitOps modeling with the flexibility that Codefresh provides. As teams started deploying to Kubernetes, processes weren’t well enforced. Some teams were deploying manually as they scaled, making it difficult to maintain. They took the opportunity to renew their pipelines, taking advantage of Codefresh support and a new environment with new clusters to start afresh. Using Codefresh to implement a GitOps approach, teams now all use the same model thanks to repos that define their processes.

“Codefresh feels like a very simple product, which is a very difficult thing to do with the flexibility and power the tool has provided to enable our teams.”

Drew Brown, Senior Application Platform Engineer

Value

Reducing pipeline maintenance by 98%

WWT IT has over 600 individual pipelines to maintain across their teams, and for compliance reasons, can’t hand maintenance over to developers. Managing this many pipelines without a dedicated team was impossible. With Codefresh, they define different types of pipelines for developers to use, which has reduced the number of pipelines to approximately a dozen. This mak es ongoing maintenance far easier and deployments more reliable and consistent.

“Writing pipelines can feel a bit difficult, but with Codefresh the setup is so plain and simple. It’s easy to think through and easy to teach.”

Drew Brown, Application Platform Engineer

More modern deployments with easier maintenance

It was important WWT IT chose a tool with feature parity, and the ability to customize deployments to suit its existing tools and processes. With its previous in-house tool, teams couldn’t perform any maintenance, so there was a high risk of it breaking. Codefresh provides a layer of abstraction that means they can rapidly iterate on their internal system and provide a better experience for teams. They also didn’t have to reinvent the entire internal system to implement modern deployments, saving plenty of implementation and maintenance time.

“Codefresh has been very adaptable to our needs. It’s more than just a deployment tool. We’re finding so many uses to fit into our ways of working and simplify our daily life.”

Kris Reese, Manager Application Development

Improved developer experience

A large part of the reason WWT IT brought on Codefresh was to maintain feature parity for its developers, but it’s also improved their experience. Teams that were all using different processes now follow a consistent GitOps approach, which has simplified their day-to-day lives. These teams reported that they appreciate the guidance and additional structure, which has made their roles easier, especially as they move away from manual processes.

“Codefresh has helped us to rapidly iterate on our internal system in a way that helps us provide a better experience to our teams.”