How a DevOps-centric edge compute platform, Section, leverages DigitalOcean to run any workload, anywhere

Key takeaways

Service and reliability

DigitalOcean’s uptime guarantee and SLA translate to reliability, which helps companies who are accountable by their clients if something goes wrong. If an issue does arise, it’s easy to get help with around-the-clock support teams and a dedicated Slack channel.

Price to performance

With DigitalOcean’s transparent pricing and cost savings, companies can improve their margins, reinvest their savings into their core business, and significantly impact their bottom line – without sacrificing performance and reliability.

Background:

Founded in 2012 with operations out of Boulder, Colorado, and Sydney, Australia, Section is a developer-centric, container-based edge computing platform that empowers application engineers to run any workload, anywhere. Enabling standard DevOps workflows and principles, Section gives developers and web engineers the flexibility and control they need to run any piece of software in any location based on latency, security, and scalability.

Why DigitalOcean?

Section first came to DigitalOcean in 2017 through Hatch, a global program that helps startups and entrepreneurs grow their businesses. The cost-effectiveness and availability the team experienced during their year in the Hatch program were the driving factors in deciding to continue using DigitalOcean to support their edge computing platform.

When building the product, Section decided to take a different approach than traditional content delivery networks (CDNs) who own hardware infrastructure around the globe. They did this by leveraging a global network of compute resources to run their edge network, aggregating existing infrastructure to make it flexible enough to meet the performance, security, and scalability needs of all websites. Given Section’s demand for compute resources, they made a strong investment in DigitalOcean Droplets, due to the cost savings it affords the team. Section values the unmatched value that DigitalOcean provides through reliable, available, expansive, and affordable infrastructure.

When evaluating a partnership with DigitalOcean, one thing that stood out to the Section team was the level of support they received from the start. When the partnership began, the Section team was set up with a private Slack channel for their staff and their larger DigitalOcean support team. This has been helpful in notifying the team of issues – and resolving those issues. This also helps Section engineers get the support they need in a timely and efficient manner.

As Molly Wojcik, Director of Education & Awareness at Section put it, “Other cloud providers provide the same reliability as DigitalOcean, but they often cost more and support costs extra. With DigitalOcean, we get a low-cost option with great support and reliability.”

Now in their fourth year of partnering with DigitalOcean, Section runs a large volume of their customer workloads on DigitalOcean due to its performance and efficiency. They also see DigitalOcean as an ethos-aligned partner who’s similarly driven to solve problems for developers and engineers around the world – which allows the Section team to truly live up to their manifesto.