Auto Trader UK cuts IT resource use through Google Cloud, Kubernetes and Istio adoption
Summary
These changes are often cited as a key factor in the consolidation that has occurred in the local newspaper industry in recent years, which has struggled to adapt to the fact that so much of the advertising that used to prop up these titles has now moved online. Auto Trader (UK) has had to weather the same shift in market conditions and user expectations, but, by contrast, its business is thriving since it began its transition from being a pure-play print media brand to an online marketplace in 1996. Following some abortive attempts to address that issue on-premise, the organisation decided to move its applications over to GCP, where it could tap into some of Google’s emerging Kubernetes management and service mesh technology, in the form of Istio. As well as enabling Auto Trader to solve its end-user encryption conundrum, the adoption of Istio and GKE has allowed the firm to gain a much more in-depth view of how IT resources are used within its infrastructure, and has cut down on previously unknown amounts of over-provisioning. “We were really early into virtualisation, deploying things like VMware ahead of other people, and we’re not frightened to make bold decisions when it comes to technology if it allows us to achieve some of our goals – and that was definitely the case with Istio,” he said.