FreedomPay Uses PagerDuty Runbook Automation Self-Hosted As Extension of Next Level Platform Engineering

FreedomPay is a data-driven Next Level Commerce™ platform that transforms existing payment systems and processes from legacy to leading edge. As the premier choice for many of the largest companies across the globe, FreedomPay’s technology is built to deliver rock solid performance in the highly complex environment of global commerce.

Business Success Puts Pressure on Operations

As the FreedomPay business scaled, Chris Randall, Director, Platform Operations, and DJ DeBrakeleer, Site Reliability Engineer, found that the volume of operations and maintenance tasks was increasing to the point where it was straining their team. In addition to project work, Chris and his team found themselves frequently executing repetitive tasks like configuration and setup for new customers, validating and maintaining data feeds with customers, investigating and recycling app pools, database maintenance, and more.

Adding to the burden was the push to have the Platform Operations team provide 24×7 coverage. Burnout was looming and it was clear that a new approach would have to be taken.

Knowing that throwing more headcount at the problem was not the right solution, Chris and DJ decided to look for an automation solution.

Automating Processes Across Systems

Chris connected with a performance engineer colleague who had been using PagerDuty Runbook Automation Self-Hosted for a variety of test infrastructure automation use cases.

Chris and DJ’s first experiment using Runbook Automation Self-Hosted was to automate running SSIS jobs outside of SQL agent using PowerShell. During this proof-of-concept, the ease of use and general utility of Runbook Automation Self-Hosted became clear. The team started an internal wiki page to keep track of all the ideas they had for where PagerDuty’s capabilities could be applied.

PagerDuty would also help FreedomPay improve their security posture. Considering the importance and sensitivity of FreedomPay’s customers’ data, maintaining strict privileges around production infrastructure PCI compliance is paramount. Using PagerDuty to put appropriate permissions around processes made this easier.

Boosted Productivity

After their proof-of-concept, DJ and team jumped at the opportunity to create further operational efficiencies using PagerDuty with the onboarding of a large, complex client.

Previously, onboarding this type of account would require a great deal of file processing and manual tasks that typically would have fallen on DJ’s team to fulfill. Instead, they automated the workflows by having PagerDuty invoke the various tools and scripts needed to onboard the new client.

With this success under their belt, the Platform Operations team continued to automate more procedures with PagerDuty. “By automating tasks with PagerDuty Runbook Automation Self-Hosted, we have saved the equivalent of three or four dedicated people’s worth of time. And by removing the risk of human error, we have solidified the reliability of our critical processes,” shared DJ.

What’s Next?

DJ and his colleagues are looking to use PagerDuty Runbook Automation Self-Hosted to automate incident response and spread Runbook Automation Self-Hosted usage to other teams who participate in production operations work.

Learn how PagerDuty Runbook Automation Self-Hosted can help you automate and delegate business and IT processes, contact your account manager or request a demo.