Charli AI

Case Study: How Charli.ai Crushed AI/ML Development Bottlenecks and Fortified Security

For an innovator in the AI-powered financial solutions like Charli.ai, speed and intelligence are the currency of the realm. Their sophisticated platform, built on a complex microservices architecture, is designed for high performance. However, that same complexity became a critical bottleneck for the elite AI/ML teams responsible for driving the product forward, posing challenges to development velocity, operational efficiency, and security posture.

The Challenge: Local Development Friction

The challenge was one familiar to any advanced engineering organization: the very architecture that provides scalability in production can create a drag on development. For VPs of Engineering, this translates to a direct impact on innovation and feature velocity. For DevOps and Platform Engineers, it means managing brittle, heavyweight local environments that are a constant source of friction. And for CISOs, disparate and uncontrolled developer environments represent a significant and unnecessary security risk. 

 Charli.ai's team faced a development cycle where setting up a local environment to work on a new service could take weeks. This process was not only slow but fragile, leading to the classic “it works on my machine” problem, which hindered collaboration and eroded code quality. The organization had reached an inflection point where a new development paradigm was not just desired, but necessary.
 
Codezero’s "Zero Environment Development" enables developers to selectively and securely forward traffic for a specific micro-service from a shared Kubernetes cluster directly to their local workstation. This allows devs to run and debug a single service locally while it operates in real-time with all its remote dependencies in the cloud.
 
This approach yielded three critical advantages:
 
  1. For Development and DevOps: The need for slow, resource-intensive local stacks was eliminated. Developers could now spin up and test a new service in a high-fidelity, production-like environment in minutes, not weeks.
  2. For Leadership: This dramatic reduction in setup time translated directly into accelerated development cycles and increased team velocity. The engineering organization could now ship better code, faster.
  3. For Security Leadership: Development now operates within secure, isolated namespaces. This prevents environment drift and minimizes the attack surface by removing the need for broad cluster credentials. It provides CISOs with the technical control and oversight required in a modern security landscape.

The Transformation: From Weeks to Minutes

The impact on Charli.ai’s AI/ML teams was immediate and profound.

"Codezero takes the complexity out of the microservices mesh, and our developers just get to focus on building features," says Kevin Collins, CTO of Charli.ai. "It’s made our team faster, more collaborative and our product better."

The new workflow is a model of efficiency. A developer can now take a branch, write new code for a service, and use Codezero to instantly forward the live cluster traffic to their local machine for immediate, real-world integration testing. By sharing a secure preview URL, they can collaborate with teammates or product managers on work-in-progress, creating a rapid and effective feedback loop.

The result is a trifecta of business-critical outcomes:

  • Maximum Velocity: Engineering teams are unburdened by environment complexity.
  • Operational Excellence: The development workflow is simplified, predictable, and scalable.
  • Fortified Security: Development occurs in a controlled, isolated, and secure manner.

Charli.ai didn't just find a tool; they adopted a more efficient, secure, and expert standard for cloud-native development. They empowered their teams to focus on what they do best: building the future of AI.

Read the Charli.ai Case Study

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Case Study: How CIVO Erased Engineering Silos to Accelerate Cloud Platform Development

As a cloud provider renowned for delivering speed and simplicity in the Kubernetes space, Civo’s reputation hinges on its own engineering velocity. Yet, like many high-growth tech companies, they faced an internal friction point that threatened to undermine their pace of innovation: the collaboration gap between their development teams.

The Problem: Integration Bottlnecks

 While individual teams may be highly productive, the integration points between them, particularly between frontend and backend services—become a source of delay. For a VP of Engineering, this "last mile" of integration directly impacts delivery timelines. For DevOps engineers, it creates a dependency on brittle staging environments. For CISOs, the ad-hoc workarounds developers invent to bridge these gaps, such as unmanaged tunneling tools, represent a shadow IT risk that is both insecure and impossible to audit.

For Civo, the bottleneck was clear. A backend developer would finish a new API endpoint, but the frontend team was blocked, unable to test against it until a full deployment to a shared staging environment was complete. This created a slow, asynchronous feedback loop that delayed projects and frustrated developers.

The Solution: Real-Time, Secure Collaboration

To eliminate this bottleneck, Civo integrated Codezero into their development workflow, transforming how their teams collaborate.

Codezero’s "Zero Environment Development" enables developers to selectively and securely forward traffic for a specific micro-service from a shared Kubernetes cluster directly to their local workstation.

This capability was the turning point for Civo.

  • A backend developer could now share a stable endpoint for their work-in-progress with a frontend developer in seconds.
  • The frontend developer could then configure their local environment to consume this secure URL, allowing them to build and test against a live, in-progress API without waiting for a staging deployment.

This new workflow delivered targeted advantages across the engineering organization:

  1. For Development Teams: Silos were instantly broken down. Parallel workstreams became possible, enabling real-time integration testing and immediate feedback between developers.
  2. For VPs of Engineering: The removal of this critical bottleneck directly translated to shorter development cycles and a tangible increase in feature velocity.
  3. For CISOs & Security: Codezero replaced the need for insecure, unmanaged tools. All sharing and traffic forwarding happens within a controlled, auditable, and secure framework, giving security leadership the oversight they require.

The Transformation: "A Game Changer for Us"

The result was a fundamental shift in Civo’s development culture, from siloed and sequential to collaborative and parallel.

"It has been a game changer for us," says Josh Mesout, Head of Engineering at Civo. "Codezero has saved us a significant amount of time. The ability for our developers to share their work-in-progress with colleagues has drastically improved collaboration."

The friction was gone. Instead of waiting days for a staging build, developers now share in-flight Service Variants multiple times a day, resolving integration issues in minutes. This rapid, high-fidelity feedback loop not only accelerated development but also improved the quality and reliability of the final code.

By adopting Codezero, Civo achieved three key outcomes essential for any modern engineering leader:

  • Radical Collaboration: Teams can now work in true parallel, eliminating cross-team dependencies.
  • Enhanced Velocity: The most significant source of delay was removed, allowing Civo to ship its platform innovations faster.
  • Secure by Design: Collaboration is enabled through a secure, managed, and auditable platform, hardening the security posture of the development lifecycle.

Civo’s story demonstrates that to build a fast and simple product for customers, you must first equip your own teams with fast and simple tools.

Read the CIVO Case Study

Listen to a CIVO DevOps leader describe Codezero in his own words.