Managing the deployment, delivery and security of 8,000 applications for the global leader in fundraising software

This well-established fundraising management software provider is using the power of data to drive collaboration and catalyse impact across the globe to build a better world.  

They use the power of technology to connect people with institutions and provide the tools required to help people donate money to non-profit and educational organizations in an attempt to create a social economy for good that will benefit mankind.

They turned to NetScaler to help them:

• Manage the application delivery and security lifecycle for each one of their 8,000 applications
• Ensure operational consistency across their multitude of different deployment environments
• Secure thousands of credit card transactions a day and safeguard applications from attack

It’s all about the application

Driving this much good takes the right applications. Indeed, this provider of nonprofit fundraising software hosts some 8,000+ applications in data centers all over the globe that enable philanthropists to connect and donate to charities.  

All these applications must be available all the time and scale to meet fluctuating demand. After all, without the applications, the donations stop. Moreover, because the applications process thousands of credit card transactions a day, not only must the applications and infrastructure be secure, it must be demonstrably secure and comply with the appropriate regulatory requirements.

A further complication for this fundraising software provider is how to manage the lifecycle of the 8,000 applications as they come into and out of service. Approximately 70% of its applications are recreated and redeployed, along with the associated delivery and security configuration, each year to align with tax requirements for donors and charities.

The networking team found it could be difficult to track an application from development through testing and into production in different data centers and cloud environments that frequently have disparate operational and security tools.  

The company needed an application delivery and security platform that ensured availability, scalability, and security and that provided operational consistency across different environments to fit their hybrid application deployment model. So they turned to NetScaler.

NetScaler’s single code base enables complete operational consistency across environments

NetScaler’s proven track record of providing availability and observability to many of the world’s largest e-commerce companies instilled confidence that the same functionality could be brought to their environments and ensure the experience of their users is maintained at all times.

NetScaler’s unique software design means that all NetScaler form factors benefit from the same code base and provide deployment flexibility and complete operational consistency. This was very important to this fundraising software provider as it meant that the configuration they create in development on a virtual NetScaler ADC can be directly used in the test environment and moved into production and run on physical devices to meet their scale requirements. They know that the configuration will behave in exactly the same way in all cases — including the cloud images when they move workloads there in the future.

NetScaler StyleBooks shorten deployment times from hours to minutes

Ordinarily, managing so many applications is arduous, but the fundraising software provider’s networking team find managing the deployment, decommissioning and redeployment of 8,000 applications is simplified with NetScaler StyleBooks. StyleBooks are composable and customizable templates that can be used to deploy a configuration quickly and easily. The team were able to scan their existing configurations and create customized StyleBooks for each individual application, enabling them to bring the right application delivery and security config to every environment for each specific application as it is deployed. Not only did this simplify application deployment and migration through the entire application lifecycle, it also shortened the transition times from hours to minutes per application as well as removing the risk of errors associated with manual configuration.

Moreover, StyleBooks are automatically versioned so the fundraising software provider is assured that they are using the most up-to-date delivery configuration. It also keeps a current version of the configuration for audit purposes so that the security team knows exactly the posture of the application in production.

Securing transactions and staying ahead of evolving security threats

As you can imagine with an e-commerce site that processes credit card transactions, security is paramount. The fundraising software provider uses advanced NetScaler SSL capabilities to ensure that all transactions are encrypted end-to-end. This ensures that donors can have confidence that their personal data is protected at all times.  

To ensure the best security, the fundraising software provider mostly uses TLS v 1.3 but, given the clientele, it is still necessary to support TLS v1.2 used in older browsers. The security team keeps a close eye on the SSL infrastructure to ensure that certificates are kept up to date and that deprecated ciphers are removed — another burdensome task made easy with NetScaler’s built-in SSL dashboard.  

In addition to acting as a single point for SSL policy definition and significantly reducing operational overheard, the SSL dashboard provides visibility of the SSL transactions and alerts them to any unauthorized attempts to deviate from their SSL policy.

The fundraising software provider uses a web application firewall (WAF) in order to meet the PCI-DSS compliance regulations. While they did not initially deploy the WAF functionality of NetScaler in their environment — preferring to maintain a separation of duties — when Log4j hit they were able to mitigate a slow response from their WAF vendor by using NetScaler to deploy a virtual patch and protect their entire estate while they tested and upgraded all their applications in the back end. Initially worried that another layer of security might impact operations, they found that NetScaler’s performance and centralized management enabled them to provide the securest access to their myriad applications and not impact end-user experience

NetScaler provides unparalleled insight and reduces complexity and cost

NetScaler occupies a privileged location in the network, in that it sits in front of every application and has visibility into every transaction. Because of this, it is uniquely positioned to collect an unparalleled amount of telemetry that it analyzes to give the administrators a real-time view of what’s happening across their environments. With full visibility of everything from server response time to application end-user experience, NetScaler provides detailed information on the health, usage, and performance of the application, the network, the infrastructure, and the security of the environment for each transaction. This feat would otherwise require a lot of different tools and ramp up complexity and cost.

All of this telemetry is viewable in NetScaler Console or can be exported to a third-party observability platform for further analysis and tracking. The insights are used by the network team to enhance troubleshooting when issues arise with the application or network and by the security team to provide them with the statistics they need on the types and frequency of attacks they suffer, helping them to stay ahead of evolving security threats.

The future holds more automation for streamlined operations

Undoubtedly, this fundraising software provider would struggle to run their business so leanly without NetScaler and its simple management tools, so what’s next? Currently, the fundraising software provider is working closely with NetScaler to further automate all of the processes described above. The goal is to make it easier for application owners to deploy their applications with the right delivery and security. With Terraform and Ansible integrations for NetScaler, they can fully automate the NetScaler configuration with just a few clicks.  

This will facilitate a shift to a more software-centric approach to ADCs — something that NetScaler’s software-first approach and superior performance makes eminently possible. Similarly, the single code-base and operational consistency enables the fundraising software provider to start to use cloud deployment to easily expand their operations across the globe.

NetScaler makes it easier for donors to give with confidence

If you want to create a social economy for good, you need your donors to be able to give easily and securely. NetScaler’s broad feature set ensures that applications are delivered and secured in accordance with this fundraising software provider’s stringent policies so they can rest assured that their users always get the best experience.  

It’s a big job to manage all the applications required to change the world, but the powerful, centralized management of NetScaler and the use of StyleBooks solves the problem of managing the delivery and security of 8,000 applications that need to be updated so regularly with so few admins.

And, as they move forward with increased automation, the small admin team can afford to be more strategic with their outlook and deliver even more to the social economy they are trying to create