Jim Falgout,
Co-CTO, KNIME
Co-CTO, KNIME
“There's a little bit of expectation with Kubernetes that this is going to take days to install. With Replicated, we complete POCs that take an hour to do an install and have it all up and running. Taking all that complexity away was huge.”
%201.png)
Company Size:
250
Industry:
Data Science
Challenge
KNIME is a complete platform for data science, from data discovery to building models and more. When KNIME introduced Community Hub, a global community for data science that provides a place for users to learn, collaborate, and share their knowledge, it was loved immediately. Their customers quickly asked for a version that would exist in their own network behind a firewall, just for their own employees. The idea for KNIME Business Hub was born, and so was the need to deploy it self-hosted.
KNIME needed to find a solution that would work for customers of every size. “We have a big disparity in customer deployments,” says Jim Falgout, Co-CTO of KNIME. “We have really small customers who are maybe a small five person team all the way up to enterprise customers who have hundreds, if not thousands of people, using our software.”
KNIME needed to provide flexibility while installing to large companies, and a quick and simple installation experience for their smaller customers. In both, they needed to take away the traditional complexity of a Kubernetes-based installation. Luckily, they found Replicated.
KNIME needed to find a solution that would work for customers of every size. “We have a big disparity in customer deployments,” says Jim Falgout, Co-CTO of KNIME. “We have really small customers who are maybe a small five person team all the way up to enterprise customers who have hundreds, if not thousands of people, using our software.”
KNIME needed to provide flexibility while installing to large companies, and a quick and simple installation experience for their smaller customers. In both, they needed to take away the traditional complexity of a Kubernetes-based installation. Luckily, they found Replicated.
“We have a big disparity in customer deployments. We have really small customers who are maybe a small five person team all the way up to enterprise customers who have hundreds, if not thousands of people, using our software.”
Jim Falgout,
Co-CTO, KNIME
Co-CTO, KNIME
Solution
KNIME started working with Replicated before they even released Business Hub, and subsequently their very first Business Hub customers used Replicated to install their software.
KNIME’s small customers utilized Replicated’s single node kurl.sh, which ships Business Hub and a Kubernetes cluster together and provides a simple GUI for the end-customer to install and update the application. This allowed KNIME’s smaller customers to easily install the application without need for expert Kubernetes knowledge.
KNIME’s larger customers installed Business Hub using Replicated’s KOTS and kURL in order to provide flexibility around areas like ingress and storage. “Having the flexibility of the config within Replicated was super valuable,” says Jim. “We could do an install and they [the customer] could just click ‘don't deploy ingress’. Then we would give them a bunch of options that helped us integrate with their ingress.”
Quickly, KNIME was able to see the value of Replicated beyond just the installer. Through Replicated’s Vendor Portal, KNIME was given insights into which customers were using Business Hub, and based on these insights they were able to identify at-risk customers before they churned. In addition, they leaned on the Kubernetes expertise of the Replicated staff and worked closely with the Replicated support team to debug any issues. Maybe most importantly, they were able to give their customers agency over software upgrades, saving their own team time.
“Being able to give a customer insight into what's in the pipeline as far as upgrades, and being able to see those and manage those themselves has been really valuable,” says Jim. “It was a pretty rocky road before [Replicated] and doing installs. Having that automated and being able to have customers manage that process themselves saves us a lot of time, and also provides them a lot of value.”
Some of the value? With Replicated, KNIME increased their release frequency from 2 times a year to 12. For KNIME, working with Replicated allowed them to focus on developing Business Hub, not deploying it, and get their application installed and continually upgraded to customers of every size and every Kubernetes skill level.
KNIME’s small customers utilized Replicated’s single node kurl.sh, which ships Business Hub and a Kubernetes cluster together and provides a simple GUI for the end-customer to install and update the application. This allowed KNIME’s smaller customers to easily install the application without need for expert Kubernetes knowledge.
KNIME’s larger customers installed Business Hub using Replicated’s KOTS and kURL in order to provide flexibility around areas like ingress and storage. “Having the flexibility of the config within Replicated was super valuable,” says Jim. “We could do an install and they [the customer] could just click ‘don't deploy ingress’. Then we would give them a bunch of options that helped us integrate with their ingress.”
Quickly, KNIME was able to see the value of Replicated beyond just the installer. Through Replicated’s Vendor Portal, KNIME was given insights into which customers were using Business Hub, and based on these insights they were able to identify at-risk customers before they churned. In addition, they leaned on the Kubernetes expertise of the Replicated staff and worked closely with the Replicated support team to debug any issues. Maybe most importantly, they were able to give their customers agency over software upgrades, saving their own team time.
“Being able to give a customer insight into what's in the pipeline as far as upgrades, and being able to see those and manage those themselves has been really valuable,” says Jim. “It was a pretty rocky road before [Replicated] and doing installs. Having that automated and being able to have customers manage that process themselves saves us a lot of time, and also provides them a lot of value.”
Some of the value? With Replicated, KNIME increased their release frequency from 2 times a year to 12. For KNIME, working with Replicated allowed them to focus on developing Business Hub, not deploying it, and get their application installed and continually upgraded to customers of every size and every Kubernetes skill level.
KNIME now releases 12 times per year, up from 2
KNIME’s upgrade time is down from 4 hours to 30 minutes
