GRIDSERVE are innovating for the good of the planet, developing dependable, low-cost, clean energy solutions. From the first EV charging forecourt in the UK to their EV leasing and remote solar solutions, GRIDSERVE has an impressive dedication to transitioning the world away from its damaging reliance on fossil fuels.
GRIDSERVE is a company on the move, since launching its first EV charging forecourt in 2020, it now runs over 300 chargers across the UK’s motorways. Due to this rapid growth, the organisation needs to scale-up its IT, continuing to deliver innovation at pace, but with reliability, repeatability and security baked into everything they do.
GRIDSERVE knew that their current working practices would not support their growth ambitions. After numerous outages and conflicting workstreams affecting the delivery of business-critical software, coupled with their partner ecosystem growing un-checked, they needed to act.
GRIDSERVE needed an open development environment where multiple suppliers could contribute but with a common set of standards and governance practices in place, so they approached Dootrix.
"Having Dootrix as our Cloud Technology Partner proved to be the right choice. They’re now regarded by GRIDSERVE as being an internal member of the team."
Andre Pageot
CHIEF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FOR GRIDSERVE
By working with business stakeholders, Dootrix defined a new ALM to enable GRIDSERVE to move fast but reliably.
Dootrix began with a formal discovery process to understand how the existing teams, partners and systems interacted. Stakeholder workshops and interviews uncovered how work is currently conceived, managed, and delivered. Combining their business processes and development procedures into one integrated workflow with shared tooling became one of the top priorities
Working within GRIDSERVE’S Azure instance, Dootrix defined a secure development pipeline to manage the code deployment and provide centralised governance in the multi-supplier environment. This new workflow, automates workplace creation through to code deployment and includes stakeholder approvals, testing and revisions.
Azure Front Door was used as the central governance point for all public-facing applications. It gave GRIDSERVE a single location for security, access and publishing. Key Vault, Azure Active Directory and RBAC were leveraged for authentication, providing GRIDSERVE complete control of their applications and code while supporting partners with an open and governed development environment to create and support quality software.
GRIDSERVE’s new ALM is transforming the organisation as it scales up.
By combining contradictory business workflows into a single structured process, projects are delivered more quickly and more reliably.
As the first application to fully adopt the ALM, the organisation’s website enjoys a fully automated development workflow, including a blue/green deployment strategy based within Azure App Service and served via Azure Front Door with caching and CDN features. The new workflow provides a seamless customer experience with zero downtime and immediate rollback, de-risking software updates for the public facing site.
GRIDSERVE is scaling up operations with new electric vehicle forecourts, more EV leasing options, and a transformational approach to software development using a bespoke ALM is enabling the organisation’s partners to move faster and safer.
By working closely with the stakeholders and understanding their existing issues, we helped the GRIDSERVE to modernise their ALM through the use of enterprise DevOps.
With a single structured process, GRIDSERVE’s projects are delivered increasingly quickly and more reliably.