YouLend supports merchants with a fintech-first approach on AWS
Maximizing AWS efficiency enables this fintech innovator to expand its cloud-based lending platform to empower its small- to mid-size business customers.
Industry
Financial Services
Challenge
Managing a complex cloud infrastructure, while scaling rapidly and controlling costs.
Outcome Maximizing efficiency on AWS enables this fintech innovator to expand its lending platform, empowering small- and medium-size business clients with financial solutions. Solutions Optimizer+ Platforms Amazon Web Services (AWS)Professional & Managed Services
Rackspace Modern Operations, Managed ServicesCustomer
YouLend is a leading global embedded financing platform, providing fast and flexible funding solutions for small- and mid-sized businesses. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, YouLend operates across nine regions in the UK, EU and U.S. The company's technology enables a wide range of organizations to offer branded financing products to its merchant base, integrating with partners like Amazon, eBay and Shopify.
YouLend's AI-driven credit risk assessment technology streamlines the funding process, making capital more accessible for merchants. The company's success is built on its ability to seamlessly integrate with existing e-commerce and payment ecosystems, enhancing partners' services with efficient, flexible funding options.
"With Rackspace Modern Operations Premium, we get a depth of knowledge that we would not get anywhere else. Fundamentally, it’s a level of experience that takes a long time to acquire, and it just fast-tracks us forward when we need to do something complicated."
Situation
As YouLend rapidly expanded across multiple geographies, it needed to scale its operations. In the process of upleveling its technology, the company wanted to achieve several critical goals, including executing due diligence, strengthening its cost optimization policies to benefit its long-term success, and prioritizing efficiency in the management of its increasingly complex cloud infrastructure.
The company growth, coupled with its need to support various partners and spin up new environments, led to an expansive cloud resource landscape. This complexity made it difficult for YouLend to maintain visibility into its cloud spending and optimize its resource allocation effectively.
"As a company expands, you bring on more teams and need to deploy additional environments," said Mark Ufland, CTO of YouLend. "In any cloud setup, it's easy to incur costs without realizing it."
Despite already operating at 94% efficiency on AWS, YouLend recognized the potential for even greater optimization. The company sought a more tailored approach to its existing cloud management to further streamline its operations, optimize costs and leverage advanced AWS offerings. Additionally, YouLend wanted to maintain its competitive edge in the marketplace.
"There was a big gap in the support for small- to mid-size businesses,” said Ufland “We ended up just doing it better because of our technology and the way it worked. We did it more efficiently.”
"While some competitors were attempting to address the same need, our technology-first approach set us apart,” added Ufland. “Our ability to seamlessly integrate with partner APIs and efficiently process financing gave us the edge in serving this underserved market."
“Having Rackspace as our FinOps partner has been invaluable in allowing us to scale and keep a lid on costs."
Solution
Rackspace Modern Operations Premium provided YouLend with access to deep technical expertise, collaborating with its team to manage the YouLend environment. AWS gives the company a scalable infrastructure. And Optimizer+, a service that identifies cost-saving opportunities and ways to optimize cloud usage, provides guardrails that help YouLend grow while optimizing its technology spend.
Rackspace also proactively suggested that YouLend apply for AWS’s Enterprise Discount Program (EDP), then collaborated with AWS to help YouLend further optimize its cloud spend. AWS EDP is a savings program that offers discounts on AWS cloud services to customers who commit to a certain amount of annual spend.
“Rackspace highlighted the compute savings plans as well. Getting a better deal on the EDP wouldn’t have happened without Rackspace and its relationship with AWS.” Ufland says.
Rackspace supported YouLend's migration from Amazon EC2 to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), enhancing scalability and resource management. Throughout this process, the Rackspace team offered essential guidance and support.
Ufland noted: “The good thing about Rackspace is you've got loads of people, loads of knowledge and loads of experience, and you work with loads of customers. Even though we've got an internal team, sometimes when you come across a problem that's difficult, you need outside support. With Rackspace as our managed services partner, we can ask someone who's seen thousands of these issues and get an answer quicker than having to figure it out ourselves.
"With Rackspace Modern Operations Premium, we get a depth of knowledge that we would not get anywhere else,” he added. “Fundamentally, it’s a level of experience that takes a long time to acquire, and it just fast-tracks us forward when we need to do something complicated. Rackspace has been instrumental in helping us navigate the complexities of our cloud infrastructure and optimize our AWS environment."
YouLend increased AWS efficiency by nearly 5% — from 94-95% to 99%, driving greater cost savings.
Outcome
The partnership between YouLend and Rackspace Technology has yielded significant benefits across multiple areas. “The Optimizer+ team is great, and their recommendations help us achieve our goals,” Ufland said. “Our lead engineer is also adding value in this area. Together, they got us to where we are, which is 99% efficiency.”
After the completion of its modernization initiative, YouLend’s use of cloud resources on AWS increased efficiency, rising from 94% to 99%.
The enhanced cost management capabilities provided by Rackspace proved invaluable as YouLend continued to scale. As Ufland said, "Having Rackspace as our FinOps partner has been invaluable in allowing us to scale and keeping a lid on costs."
This improved financial efficiency has had a ripple effect throughout the organization, enabling YouLend to explore new technologies and innovations.
"The cost savings allow us to look at what other AWS services we can leverage knowing that we are as efficient as we can possibly be,” Ufland said. “I can tell my CFO that we are efficient with what we are using. We are now looking at generative AI technology, and he is happy to support it."
The migration to Amazon EKS, facilitated by Rackspace, resulted in quicker and more efficient deployments, with better resource management. This improvement in deployment enhanced YouLend’s ability to respond rapidly to market demands and customer needs.
YouLend is now well-positioned to leverage advanced AWS services, like Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, for AI and machine learning initiatives.
Reflecting on the long-term impact of the partnership, Ufland said, "Just to get me going at the start and help me actually build the infrastructure up initially was invaluable. I would not have been able to do it without Rackspace being there to help me get it off the ground. We would not have gotten where we are now without that partnership."
About Rackspace Technology
Rackspace Technology is a hybrid, multicloud solutions expert. We combine our expertise with the world’s leading technologies — across AI, applications, data and security — to deliver end-to-end solutions. We have a proven record of advising customers based on their business challenges, designing solutions that scale, building and managing those solutions, and optimizing returns into the future. As a global hybrid, multicloud technology services pioneer, we deliver innovative capabilities to help customers build new revenue streams, increase efficiency and create incredible experiences. Named a best place to work, year after year according to Fortune, Forbes and Glassdoor, we attract and develop world-class talent to deliver the best expertise to our customers. Everything we do is wrapped in Fanatical Experience® — our obsession with customer success that drives us to help each customer work faster, smarter and stay ahead of what’s next.
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