Designing the Perfect Prototyping, Workflow and Collaboration Platform in the Cloud

InVision was recognized at MongoDB World 2017 as the winner of the MongoDB Innovation Award: Atlas category. We had the opportunity to sit down with Dana Lawson, InVision’s VP of Platform Engineering to learn more about their innovation.

Tell us about InVision

InVision is the world’s leading design collaboration platform. Helping companies like IBM, Airbnb, Visa, Netflix and Evernote unlock the power behind design-driven product development, InVision makes it easy for teams to prototype, manage their workflow, and control their entire design process all in one place.

The goal of InVision has always been to create a highly collaborative design platform in the cloud that would allow people around the world to have access to design, review, and user test products—all without a single line of code.

Why did you build InVision on MongoDB?

When originally building InVision, we looked to MongoDB right out of the gate because of its uptime and scalability. We needed to be able to provide our clients with a platform that is as reliable as we are.

In addition, MongoDB helps us easily build new features. You can imagine that with designs, requirements are very fluid and having a restrictive data model is a limiting factor. MongoDB’s document data model has help us innovate quickly. An example of a project that uses MongoDB is Inspect. For designers that build in Sketch, they can send their design to Inspect, which breaks down the Sketch file into different layers and allows front-end developers to get assets, CSS tags, and exact pixel dimensions for how the designs should actually look on a live site.

When we started with MongoDB, we were using Chef to automate AWS instances and the database. We had 28 replica sets spread across 4 different environments, some of them in different AWS accounts.

While we were having success, once MongoDB Atlas was released, we immediately took the leap. Moving to a database-as-a-service offering increased our team’s productivity as we were able to focus on our product, rather than managing the infrastructure. As a turnkey cloud database, MongoDB Atlas provides us with the flexibility needed to develop in a secure, robust environment while our customers continue to have access to a highly collaborative design platform in the cloud.

How do you use MongoDB Atlas and what impact does it have on your day to day?

We use MongoDB Atlas on the AWS cloud because of the ease of use and flexibility of the cloud platform. Together we are able to build a multi-tenant solution for Javascript Object Notation (JSON) messages received. Essentially, we use MongoDB as a transactional data store for any data, like our design artifacts, that benefit from not having a pre-defined schema.

The design data for a prototype can have any number of layers and graphics. Anyone who has seen or worked with a design tool will have familiarity with layers and the layers pane where objects can be nested, grouped, and inherited. MongoDB's flexible schema allows our backend services to store the data model for a prototype with minimal effort.

The most common queries we run are simple .find()s on indexed fields. At our peak, we read thousands of documents per second; we’re able to retrieve documents usually within 2 milliseconds.

By integrating Atlas with all of our provisioning, we have avoided the dreaded DevOps bottleneck. Without training, our engineers can “self-serve” by simply going to the InVision platform and define the instance they need; MongoDB Atlas configures it automatically and they’re ready to go.

What does your technology stack look like?

Our technology stack is primarily focused on Node and Google Go, allowing us to run a microservices architecture to create independent feature sets on data stores and significantly reduce dependencies. These reductions allow us to quickly spin up data stores and automatically add clusters as needed. Right now we use Kubernetes with MongoDB Atlas, though we are moving everything over to Atlas so we do not have to worry about uptime, EC2 clusters, anything. We’ve incorporated the MongoDB Atlas REST API into our Ansible scripts, which makes it incredibly easy for us to add new replica sets and users for different environments. We simply call out to the API and MongoDB Atlas spins up the replica sets so we don’t have to.

Some other technologies we use include AWS Lambda for short-term execution, Amazon SNS and Rabbit MQ for messaging and mobile notifications, and Amazon S3 for storing assets.

To learn more about InVision, watch their talk from MongoDB World 2017 here.

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The MongoDB Summer ‘17 Intern Series: Team Stitch

Lucas Morales and Matthew Chiaravalloti are two of this years #MongoDBSummer17 interns, working on our newly released Backend as a Service (BaaS), MongoDB Stitch . They joined the team prior to the announcement which was made at MongoDB World in Chicago, and were able to work on Stitch before its beta release. They are both working towards their Masters in Computer Science this year, Matthew at The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and Lucas at MIT, and listed the BaaS team as one of their top choices to work with throughout the summer. I had the opportunity to sit down with Matthew and Lucas to discuss their experience as interns at MongoDB during our most recent product release. Pictured: Lucas Morales & Matthew Chiaravalloti Andrea Dooley: What interested you about BaaS (MongoDB Stitch) team? Matthew Chiaravalloti: When the Campus Team sent us the list of teams and projects, we were asked to rank our choices and explain why we were were interested. BaaS seemed really cool because it is geared towards developers who don’t particularly want to write backend code, but who instead want to focus on the frontend - like myself - so it was kind of a personal reason. Lucas Morales: It seemed like a fun new project that I would have a lot of impact on. AD: How did you first hear about the MongoDB? MC: My freshman year at a UPenn Hackathon. One of the students had given a talk on how to integrate MongoDB into a web app. It sparked my interest, and that’s where I learned the name, and then I started seeing the t-shirts all over campus. LM: I also got introduced to the database at a few hackathons because it is the easiest to use. AD: What was the interview process like for the internship program? MC: The questions weren't overly abstract or mathematical. They were focused on more practical topics – programming and software design. LM: This is actually my second year interning at MongoDB. The process was really informative, it covered a lot of ground. The conversations were challenging, and not particularly just for the technical things. We talked about how the Internet works, how to handle a failure in production, and of course some algorithmic stuff. AD: Why did you decide to take the opportunity at MongoDB? MC: Honestly, the recruiting was so good. Everyone was very responsive and the process overall was better than any other company I had interviewed with. LM: The first summer I did have an offer from another company, but I felt much more satisfied by the MongoDB interview. AD: How has the program evolved since last year? LM: It’s much larger this year. We were a team of 40 last summer, this year we are 57. It’s a really solid program and we do things that matter. AD: What was it like to work on MongoDB Stitch prior to the release? MC: Since Stitch is such an exciting new area for the company and for developers, the team has grown really quickly since I joined. There is a great start-up feel, the process isn’t super formal. You grab a ticket and you work on it. Obviously we were super-busy before the release, but I was never made to feel pressured. LM: Prior to the beta I was working on integrating read rules into the MongoDB aggregation pipeline — before they were being implemented the Stitch server. Creating declarative access controls is a major feature of MongoDB Stitch – it allows a developer to define which fields a user can read or write to by defining simple JSON rules, so they can maintain data privacy.. It was great to work on something that is so important to the value Stitch brings. AD: Has anything changed since the announcement was made at MongoDB World? MC: Two days post announcement there were over 600 apps created using MongoDB Stitch. The development team continues to grow, and more apps are onboarded every day, we are working on optimizing the developer experience. AD: What’s it like to work together? MC: It’s a good balance. I work more on the front-end and Lucas is more focused on the backend. We’re both really hands on and have a lot of say. AD: What’s your favorite part of the MongoDB office? MC: The ping pong table. LM: Also the ping pong table. AD: What has been your favorite intern event so far? MC: “The Ride” through NYC, which is an interactive ride through NYC on a giant bus that has stadium like seating that face the windows inside. LM: The pizza tour where we got to learn about, make, and most importantly eat all kinds of pizza. AD: What’s the dynamic of the intern team? MC: We are a 57 person squad. We’re super close because most of us are living in the NYU dorms, but even the ones who aren’t, we still see almost every weekend. LM: We’re a good group and we have a lot of fun together. AD: What would you say to a future potential intern who might be interested in MongoDB? MC: The people at MongoDB are really great and it’s awesome that we get to produce things for people who also have technical experience, so there is a level of understanding between us because we are creating the tools. LM: You can expect to have a great experience and a lot of fun — and do things that matter! Interested in learning more about the MongoDB Internship Program? Click here .

July 12, 2017
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Data and the European Landscape: 3 Trends for 2022

The past two years have brought massive changes for IT leaders: large and complex cloud migrations; unprecedented numbers of people suddenly working, shopping and learning from home; and a burst in demand for digital-first experiences. Like everyone else, we are hoping that 2022 isn’t so disruptive (fingers crossed!), our customer conversations in Europe do lead us to believe the new year will bring new business priorities. We’re already noticing changes in conversations around vendor lock-in, thanks to the Digital Markets Act, a new enthusiasm for combining operational and analytical data to drive new insights faster, and a more strategic embrace of sustainability. Here’s how we see these trends playing out in 2022. Digital markets act draws new attention to cloud vendor lock-in in Europe We’ve heard plenty about the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act , which, in the name of ensuring fair and open digital markets, would place new restrictions on companies that are deemed to be digital “gatekeepers” in the region. That discussion will be nothing compared to the vigorous debate we expect once the EU begins the very tricky political business of determining exactly which companies will fall under the act. If the EU sets the bar for revenues, users, and market size high enough, it’s possible that the regulation will end up affecting only Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft. But a European group representing 2,500 CIOs and almost 700 organizations is now pushing to have the regulation encompass more software companies. Their main concern centers around “distorted competition” in cloud infrastructure services and a worry that companies are being locked into one cloud vendor. A trend that will likely increase in 2022 that pushes back on cloud vendor lock-in is embracing multi-cloud strategies. We should expect to see more organisations in the region pursuing multi-cloud environments as a means to improve business continuity and agility whilst being able to access best of breed services from each cloud provider. As we have always said …”it’s fine to date your cloud provider….but don’t ever marry them.” The convergence of operational and analytical data The processing of operational and analytical data is almost always contained in different data systems, each tuned to that use case and managed by separate teams. But because that data lives in separate places, it’s almost impossible for organisations to generate insights and automate actions in real time, against live data. We believe 2022 is the year we’ll see a critical mass of companies in the region make significant progress toward a convergence of their operational and analytical data. We’re already starting to see some of the principles of microservices in operational applications, such as domain ownership, be applied to analytics as well. We’re hearing about this from so many of our customers locally, who are looking at MongoDB as an application data platform that allows them to perform queries across both real-time and historical data, using a unified platform and a single query API. This results in the applications they are building becoming more intelligent and contextual to their users, while avoiding dependencies on centralized analytics teams that otherwise slow down how quickly new, data-driven experiences can be released. Sustainability drives local strategic IT choice Technology always has some environmental cost. Sometimes that’s obvious — such as the energy needs and emissions associated with Bitcoin mining. More often, though, the environmental costs are well hidden. The European Green Deal commits the European Union to reducing emissions by 55% by 2030, with a focus on sustainable industry. With the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) recently completed in Glasgow, and coming off the hottest European summer on record, climate issues have become top of mind. That means our customers are increasingly looking to make their technical operations more sustainable — including in their choice of cloud provider and data centers. According to research from IDC , more than 20% of CxOs say that sustainability is now important in selecting a strategic cloud service provider, and some 29% of CxOs are including sustainability into their RFPs for cloud services. Most interesting, 26% say they are willing to switch to providers with better sustainability credentials. Historically, it’s been difficult to make a switch like that. That’s part of the reason we built MongoDB Atlas — to give our customers the flexibility to run in any region , with any of the three largest cloud providers, and to make it easy to switch between them, and even to run a single database cluster across them. Publicly available information about the footprint of individual regions and even single data centers will make it simpler for companies to make informed decisions. Already, at least one cloud platform has added indicators to regions with the lowest carbon footprint. Source: IDC, European Customers Engage Services Providers at All Stages of Their Cloud Journey, IDC Survey Spotlight, Doc #EUR248484021, Dec 2021

December 21, 2021