Focusing on Core Competence

Rather than double the size of the company with cloud-native experts to manage the stack, Service Layers built Giant Swarm into its business model from day 1. Each partner is in charge of its area of expertise.

In this rapidly changing world, the need to shorten the timeline of Identity Access Management was becoming acute.

A typical Identity and Access Management (IAM) project with installation and configuration of IAM would take 6-36 months. Customers, on the other hand, started expecting project delivery in weeks rather than months.

Time to market could be shortened by using microservices using CI/CD practices. The tech identified to support this was identified as a public cloud and containerized apps using Kubernetes. This cutting-edge tech comes at a price — additional overhead, due to infrastructure complexities.

In the midst of the establishment of this new company, it became obvious that Kubernetes expertise needed to be outsourced. The big 3 public cloud providers all provide a management cluster for the master cluster, which is standard for any Kubernetes project. Yet, they could not manage the whole stack. Service Layers were also looking for tracking, logging, and other needs to be met. The new company decided to go with AWS and 100% managed services of their cloud-native stack.

“We wanted to keep the company focused on our core competencies, rather than double its size to include cloud infrastructure experts.”

Dr. Karsten Klinger
CEO, Service Layers

Decreasing time to market substantially

Time to value was immediate. Set-up only took a couple of weeks. Service Layers is now able to deploy to their integrators in between 20 minutes and 72 hours. As opposed to 2-3 months in the previous business model. New features are typically available within a few weeks and they provide immediate value. Requiring no localization or customization branches. It’s all core product. Giant Swarm was built into the Service Layers business model.

About Service Layers

Founded In 2017, as part of the iC Consult Group. It combines the specific knowledge and skills of iC Consult Group in IAM architecture, implementation, and operation of IAM services.

It offers a “custom-fit” identity access management service that includes functions, infrastructure, and operating processes. Service Layers’ approach takes into account specific circumstances in medium-sized and large customers.