Crafting Modern DevOps Practices in EdTech

As Blackboard onboarded more users to the Learn SaaS system, they found their infrastructure was leading to an unsustainable AWS cost per customer and was lacking important security features needed for growth. We facilitated discovery sessions with them to explore their strategic DevOps objectives. There were many concerns and stakeholders to consider: a product manager representing clients, product and security architects, customer support, and the key time constraint in the EdTech world: the school year. 

The largest AWS costs were tied up in databases and system event logging. The existing architecture was consuming too many AWS resources and running on too many machines. We developed an alternative solution by building a new microservice. We also worked with Blackboard’s product architects to build a background task that allows client admins to view download logs.

The second concern was around security. As with many global companies, localized data security is key. We worked to strengthen regional data security. We also implemented a feature to temporarily elevate a user’s security privileges, an important aspect needed to pass government-level security audits. 

We worked to build upon Blackboard’s existing tools to make these improvements sustainable. We improved the code by using agile software development practices such as writing unit tests, refactoring, and introducing the use of static analysis tools. By doing this, we made the code easier to understand and more maintainable – making any future changes faster and less prone to error.