Brigade powers political app with Rackspace

Brigade uses the latest social and mobile technology to engage ordinary citizens in government through topics like issue advocacy and elections. The app helps people come together to declare their beliefs and values, get organized with likeminded people and take action together. Founded in June 2014, Brigade’s iOS, Android and desktop apps were released into beta earlier this summer.

“As identity moves online and people spend more of their lives on digital mediums, Brigade aims to establish a network of tools that bring people together, help them organize and have an impact on issues that they care about,” said Matt Mahan, CEO of Brigade. “We are passionate about consumer experiences and powering those experiences through technology. Rackspace shares the same passion for service and enthusiasm for our business, and we consider them an extension of our in-house IT team.”

Since moving its databases to Rackspace OnMetal Cloud Servers in November 2014, Brigade’s query times have reduced more than 97 percent, from 7.3 seconds to 200 milliseconds. With OnMetal single-tenant, bare-metal servers, Brigade achieves the performance of a dedicated machine while maintaining the flexibility to spin machines up and down to meet demand, much like a traditional virtual machine (VM). Rackspace OnMetal Cloud Servers can be provisioned in minutes via an OpenStack API and can be mixed and matched with virtual cloud servers.

“For a new startup like Brigade, flexibility and uptime are key,” said John Thrall, CTO of Brigade. “As traffic grows, we have to grow with it. The time it takes to configure a traditional dedicated machine doesn’t fit with our fast-paced business model. With OnMetal and Rackspace Managed Cloud, we can spin up machines in minutes or less, much like a traditional virtual machine, but we still achieve the high performance and quick response times of a dedicated machine. This gives us confidence that our app can grow alongside our business.”

By using Rackspace OnMetal Cloud Servers, Brigade reduces cloud complexity by avoiding the need to compensate for multi-tenant performance limitations and increases reliability with SSD boxes. Brigade’s application can easily process 25 percent more jobs/second with leaner resources on OnMetal compared to the company’s previous infrastructure. And, with Fanatical Support®, Brigade can focus on innovating and growing its core business while Rackspace experts manage the backend infrastructure.

“Popular startups like Brigade get very large very quickly, and their application has to handle intense loads and scale rapidly,” said John Engates, CTO of Rackspace. “In a world where an application’s success hinges on its performance and availability, OnMetal provides the perfect fit for a social app like Brigade.”