About Safe Software

Safe Software is the creator of FME, the only Enterprise Integration Platform with comprehensive support for spatial data. The FME platform has built-in support for thousands of systems and 800+ out-of-the-box transformers, allowing users to build and automate custom integration workflows without having to code. Whether your data challenges involve spatial data, big data, stream processing, cloud migration, or business intelligence, FME can help teams spend more time using data and less time fighting it.

The Challenge

Safe Software’s FME Form product is crucial for streamlining spatial and non-spatial data formats and automating complex workflows for thousands of customers worldwide. Due to the complexity of supporting hundreds of formats and transformers, building FME Form with fast feedback times was a challenge. The development team aimed to reduce build times, free up developer time, and cut overall costs.

This became particularly necessary in 2020 when some developers transitioned to remote work due to global lockdowns. In their consideration process, Safe Software compared the options of increasing CPU power on individual machines and using either CloudBees Accelerator or Incredibuild. After evaluating their options, they chose Incredibuild due to its ease of use and efficiency.

“The Incredibuild platform has truly made a difference at our company. It has allowed us to pursue goals that we didn’t think were possible when dealing with long builds.”
Jackie Huynh
Technical Director of DevOps at Safe Software.

How Incredibuild Helped 

Incredibuild significantly reduced build times, leading to a 67.2% increase in acceleration.  Previously, using 32-core instances to build the FME Form took around 55 minutes. After implementing Incredibuild for Windows and the Visual Studios plugin, along with Build Monitor and Build Cache, build times decreased to about 18 minutes, a remarkable improvement. 

Currently, around 50 developers, both onsite and remote, utilize Incredibuild for both large and small projects. The improved build times and increased iterations have substantially boosted developer productivity and creativity, resulting in rapid testing versions and quicker turnaround of builds, especially for urgent requests. 

Results 

Since integrating Incredibuild four years ago, Safe Software has experienced significant improvements in build speed, leading to reduced compute costs and increased developer satisfaction. The continuous support from Incredibuild’s Customer Success and Technical teams has also contributed to a positive experience for the entire team. 

“We have experienced numerous benefits since implementing Incredibuild. The most notable impact has been the reduced requirement for AWS EC2 machines in our CI/CD pipelines, resulting in decreased AWS costs,”
Vincent Angeles,
DevOps Team Lead at Safe Software.