FREENOW is a multi-mobility app with taxis at its core, and one of Europe’s the most popular platforms for finding ways to get around in more than 150 cities.Hamburg-based FREENOW is the product of a series of integrations and partnerships with mobility brands and part of a joint venture between Daimler Mobility (now Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG) and The BMW Group.
FREENOW offers its users a wide range of vehicles for travel within urban areas and champions both multi-mobility and green mobility in Europe’s cities as a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform.
As with many companies in the mobility and automotive industry, external factors such as COVID-19 and geopolitical challenges demanded a thorough review of its operational efficiency.
In particular, FREENOW encountered challenges with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. Misconfigurations in Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies caused occasional Databricks outages, requiring significant troubleshooting efforts from its engineering team.
FREENOW also required additional expertise in managing AWS’s Relational Database Service (RDS) reservations, as the centralized reservation process clashed with team-specific AWS resource management. This made cost management increasingly complex.
As FREENOW was looking for additional optimization, Clifford and his team also identified inefficiencies with AWS’s OpenSearch service, node-to-node communication issues within its Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) cluster, and EC2 health check failures.
While FREENOW’s internal team was skilled in navigating AWS documentation, addressing these challenges was time intensive. As AWS billing complexities added further strain, FREENOW even considered migrating to another cloud service provider to better manage costs and forecasting.
“We were considering alternative cloud providers and solutions as we struggled to find a cost-effective solution with AWS,” says Henning Reimer, FREENOW’s Vice-President of Engineering. “Our CTO at the time connected with DoiT, and through our discussions with its team, DoiT provided invaluable support to help us maximize the potential of AWS.”
DoiT adopted a consultative approach to address FREENOW’s challenges, providing hands-on support through its Cloud Native Consulting and Support on Tap services. While FREENOW had already benefited from the foundational support provided by AWS, the company sought deeper, more specialized assistance to address its specific use cases and optimize its cloud environment.
A team of senior cloud architects at DoiT collaborated closely with FREENOW’s engineering team. “What stood out to us was having consistent, thoughtful support,” says Clifford Sanders, Engineering Manager. “One thing we very much liked was that we have two dedicated experts, who were here for us, in-depth and thoughtful as well as would take the time to explain a lot of the cost-related details of AWS.”
DoiT’s cloud experts analyzed FREENOW’s cloud infrastructure, searching for root causes and offering step-by-step guidance to address each issue they found. DoiT worked systematically with FREENOW to analyze and address IAM policy misconfigurations, optimize RDS reservation mapping, and reconfigure OpenSearch resources. FREENOW and DoiT worked together to resolve EC2 health check failures and EKS communication issues. FREENOW’s engineering team, already well-versed in AWS best practices, leveraged DoiT’s tailored guidance to enhance their technical skills and adopt more proactive methods for managing its cloud infrastructure.
This collaborative approach enabled FREENOW to address its cloud challenges more efficiently while empowering its team with deeper knowledge and tools to manage complex scenarios independently in the future.
Additionally, DoiT ensured compliance with GDPR and ISO27001 standards by implementing an ECAM (end customer account-model) onboarding process, which gave FREENOW full ownership and transparency of its infrastructure.
A significant outcome of working with DoiT has been the cultural transformation within FREENOW’s engineering team. The team views DoiT as a collaborative ally.
“We learned that DoiT has very knowledgeable and enthusiastic people,” says Clifford. “Each of them has their own domain of expertise, and they have a passion for their domains. That’s something you can feel – it’s not just a support job for them. Looking back, we weren’t accustomed to leveraging DoiT’s expertise because we’d only been in the habit of reaching out to AWS when we had severe problems. It took us months to learn to start asking for help because our mindset was to try and do it all. It was making it more difficult for ourselves. We first had to learn to change that way of thinking.”
With DoiT’s guidance, FREENOW has improved operational efficiency, optimized resource allocation, and simplified AWS billing management. This has led to better platform performance and significant cost savings. DoiT also helped resolve inefficiencies related to RDS reservations and OpenSearch utilization, ensuring greater resource efficiency.
With DoiT’s continued support, the company is focusing on creating predictable and scalable cloud infrastructure costs.
“I have to admit when we started, we were only interested in getting the best offer on AWS. With DoiT as our partner, we’ve raised our expectations about what’s possible,” says Henning.
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