Expenditures are under a microscope in today's macroeconomic environment. Organizations everywhere are trying to do more with less and stretch their budgets further. But managing spend can be an uphill battle when data is siloed across the organization. Ignite Procurement's spend management solution helps organizations unify procurement data across the enterprise, making procurement easier, better, and more efficient.
Building a smarter, scalable stack
Ignite CTO Valdemar Rolfsen says the company uses MongoDB Atlas because it gives them the flexibility they need to serve customers. Customer data can be structured or unstructured, and Atlas handles both seamlessly. He also says the rapid growth the company experienced in its early stages necessitated a database with more scalability than PostgreSQL could offer. MongoDB Atlas easily scales up or down, giving Ignite exactly what it needs to handle current workloads and the future growth the company anticipates.
Rolfsen says that while the company doesn't run as many writes and reads as in other use cases, it does run a lot of advanced operations in its in-house analytics platform, and MongoDB handles those needs easily and efficiently. He also praises the professional support he's received from the MongoDB for Startups program.
Ignite uses a mix of Atlas dedicated clusters and serverless instances, which has been generally available (GA) since June. Rolfsen says the work they're doing at Ignite fits very well within the serverless model. The Ignite platform is a mid-market and enterprise application that's used by companies in the U.S. and Europe. The platform sees heavy usage at certain times and very low usage at other times. With serverless, Rolfsen says he doesn't have to worry about the time it takes for an idle server to ramp up. When resources are in high demand, the serverless database automatically scales up to meet the demand and back down as demand subsides. With serverless pricing, you pay for what you use and not for idle resources. The transparency of the pricing model is something Rolfsen says is especially attractive in the serverless offering. Ignite is also benefiting from credits the company received as part of the MongoDB for Startups program.
Rolfsen's affinity for the serverless offering goes beyond the pricing benefits of serverless. He recognizes the impact on CO2 emissions associated with large virtual machines operating continuously. Serverless technology, he says, is a much better alternative for the environment and sustainability. Ignite's cloud usage accounts for 25% of the company's CO2 emissions, according to Rolfsen. Getting that down is, "really cool to see," he says.
In addition to MongoDB Atlas serverless instances, Ignite also runs a combination of Google Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, and Kubernetes clusters. As the company expands its services, it's starting to move more to microservices and cloud functions to limit the scope of the domain teams have to work in.
How to find out more
The MongoDB for Startups program helps startups along the way with free MongoDB Atlas credits, one-on-one technical advice, co-marketing opportunities, and access to a vast partner network. Learn more about the benefits of the MongoDB for Startup program and even sign up today.
For more startup content, check out our wrap-up of the 2022 year in startups.