Teach Starter is an online platform that creates classroom resources for teachers worldwide. They are on a mission to spark more “aha” moments in the classroom and to unlock passion, purpose and potential for teachers, so they can expand what’s possible for every student. With users across the globe, the Australian-based team has to ensure the platform runs seamlessly at all times.
The opportunity
Over the years, Teach Starter has experienced massive growth in user numbers and overall reach that has put stress on their platform. The platform had not been running on a major cloud provider and was in need of the security and scalability capabilities that major cloud providers offered.
To remain ahead of the curve and to continue delivering the best service that they are known for, Teach Starter has undergone a number of platform upgrades.
Teach Starter identified the benefits of moving its platform to the cloud and contacted ClearPoint to carry out the migration to the cloud as well as a platform upgrade.
ClearPoint has worked with Teach Starter on two separate projects: first, a migration project, moving Teach Starter away from its legacy WordPress platform and into a Google Cloud Platform. Secondly, a project to re-platform and re-architect their system to better support the new features and the growing number of users.
The migration was necessary to give them the flexibility to keep scaling up and to give them the modern technology they need in order to grow, as and when they need to,” says Bryce Scanlen, Client Development Manager at ClearPoint.
With clients all over the world, including the US, Australia and Europe, Teach Starter needs to ensure its platform is stable, secure and accessible 24/7. Additionally, the company is expecting its growth trajectory to continue and is preparing ahead for that.
“These changes provide the platform the ability to scale more easily in new geographies, with demand expected to continue to grow over the next five to ten years,” says Scanlen.
The Process
Over a number of weeks, ClearPoint moved the Teach Starter platform away from Vultr and set up the infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform.
ClearPoint then worked with the Teach Starter in-house team of developers, as a hybrid team, to help create a more modern, scalable and highly available infrastructure that would help Teach Starter replace the WordPress-powered front-end and continue building innovative features on a more robust stack.
With the Teach Starter team based in Brisbane and the ClearPoint team in New Zealand, Scanlen says the work is “a great example of modern communication” as the two teams worked remotely together, proving distance is no obstacle.
As the work with Teach Starter proves, ClearPoint’s cloud migration service can be delivered easily to any company, anywhere in the world.
We were able to migrate the platform with minimal disruption to users and straight away they had a much more secure infrastructure, which was better prepared for increases in load.
Working with the ClearPoint team has been an absolute pleasure, and we are very proud of what we have accomplished together. The pace, thoughtfulness, and the level of technical skills of the ClearPoint team translated to a very smooth and effective migration of our platform.”
Nick Pestov, Engineering Manager, Teach Starter.
The outcome
By having its services hosted on Google Cloud Platform, Teach Starter achieved better security, scalability, and visibility into its infrastructure.
The modernisation of the architecture, which included the implementation of Infrastructure as Code, better load balancing, and the addition of Kuberbetes-based microservices, has enabled a more rapid pace of innovation and experimentation for Teach Starter on their ever-evolving platform.
Looking for support on your Cloud journey? Talk to us today on how ClearPoint can help you achieve better security, scalability, and infrastructure visibility.
