Context
DRVN and OpenResearch have worked together since the earliest days of DRVN. The product runs with partners across several countries: ÖAMTC, the AA and ANWB.
CASE STUDY
DRVN
How a cloud-native rebuild delivered DRVN's vehicle compatibility check for one-sixteenth of the original development cost.
At a glance
- Customer
- DRVN
- Industry
- Connected vehicle, diagnostics
- Partners
- ÖAMTC, the AA, ANWB
- Services
- Platform Engineering, Backend & APIs, Architecture
The outcome
The same capability, rebuilt. Faded bars are what it cost before, solid bars what it costs now.
Development cost,
one-off
Running cost,
per month
5,000 EUR vs. 80,000 EUR
200 EUR vs. 1,000 EUR
What we did
Problem
End users needed a way to check whether an OBD2 diagnostic dongle is compatible with their vehicle before ordering one. The capability had already been developed once, and that version had a price attached: around 80,000 EUR to build and roughly 1,000 EUR a month to keep running.
Approach
We did not port the original design. Because we knew AWS and Google Apps in detail, we could simplify the solution itself, and let managed services carry the parts that had previously been built by hand. Infrastructure as code was in place from day one rather than added later.
Solution
A cloud-native compatibility check that cost 5,000 EUR to build instead of 80,000, runs for 200 EUR a month instead of 1,000, and shipped months earlier than the non-cloud-native alternatives on the table. In the same partnership we also delivered a complex rewrite of a legacy connected vehicle system.
Engineering details
The parts of this project a technical buyer usually asks about.
Cloud-native by design, not by migration
The saving came from simplifying the solution around managed AWS and Google services, not from running the old design on rented servers.
Infrastructure as code from day one
The move to the cloud was made with infrastructure as code, for example Terraform, in place from the start, so the environment is reproducible rather than hand-configured.
Running cost as a design constraint
Operating cost was treated as part of the design, not as something to optimise afterwards, which is why the monthly bill fell alongside the one-off build cost.
A legacy rewrite in the same partnership
Beyond the compatibility check, the teams delivered a rewrite of a legacy connected vehicle system, which is the harder half of this kind of project.
DRVN and OR have worked together since the earliest days of DRVN, and the relationship our teams built made the collaboration feel as if we were one company. OR's team was extremely knowledgeable and helped us deliver a very complex rewrite of a legacy connected vehicle system.
CEO, DRVNPaying too much to build and run something?
Send us the system and the numbers you have today. We will come back with the right technical contact and an honest view of what a rebuild would cost.
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