Case Study | The Regis Company

SaaS Platform Wins Major Contract Worth 50X the Investment by Scaling to 100k Concurrent Users

As Regis increasingly courts Fortune 1000 prospects that need to support massive numbers of end users, the platform’s scalability is becoming a critical consideration in the sales process. It wasn’t surprising that a particularly large prospect asked the company to conduct a load test confirming the platform could support 100,000 concurrent users.

“We only had a few weeks to prove we could handle that volume,” said Chief Technology Officer Joel Janov. Though Regis had conducted load testing in the past, the vendor didn’t have current metrics based on its latest platform architecture, which had advanced significantly in the interim. Meanwhile, a major contract hung in the balance.

“Given the timeline and the risk management requirement, we thought it was prudent to find an expert that had already done this type of work,” Janov said. Regis evaluated three vendors and chose SuperOrbital for its deep Kubernetes experience and consultative approach.

THE EXPERTISE TO VALIDATE CAPACITY COST-EFFECTIVELY

Regis contracted for SuperOrbital’s Connected Advisory service, which provides hands-on support that helps companies overcome challenges with the Kubernetes environment. The company gained access to highly experienced, deeply knowledgeable technical experts who could tackle the load testing issue based on best practices gleaned across many businesses running Kubernetes. The engagement began in September 2024 and included strategic consulting provided through a regular cadence of meetings and ad hoc support via a dedicated Slack channel.

SuperOrbital demonstrated immediate value by advising Regis on how to avoid the costly fees Microsoft planned to charge to conduct load testing on the Azure platform. The vendor recommended a cost-effective software tool which the internal team could easily use to conduct the testing internally.

With SuperOrbital’s guidance, Regis performed the load tests successfully and on time, satisfying the prospect’s requirements by confirming that the learning and development platform could handle the 100,000 concurrent users anticipated. The test data gave the account team greater confidence to close the deal.

“The engagement proved to be a valuable investment, playing a key role in securing a contract worth many times the fee,” Janov noted. “It came down to reducing risk and being able to speak more confidently with our prospect about our ability to meet the benchmark.”

"SuperOrbital offered great insights that helped improve our system performance, stability, and reliability."

Unlike the many startups that lack the scale to deliver an enterprise-grade offering, Regis is prepared to pitch a robust, scalable platform to other large-scale organizations with similar capacity requirements. In turn, that’s given the investor community assurance that the company can grow significantly by leveraging a strong competitive advantage to book substantial deals.

OPTIMIZING THE PLATFORM FOR BETTER RESULTS

With the load testing milestone achieved, Regis extended the engagement for another month, leaning on SuperOrbital to recommend system improvements that would optimize their cluster to better support the business.

“SuperOrbital offered great insights that helped improve our system performance, stability, and reliability,” said Software Architect Lucas Stufflebeam. For example, with the vendor’s help Regis added better error handling capabilities and enhanced its security measures.

“Most of our clients are large companies that are very security-minded,” Stufflebeam said. By improving system reliability and scalability, Regis is now better equipped to handle cyber threats and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

SuperOrbital also proved a useful sounding board for validating the internal staff’s ideas. “They reviewed our software and confirmed we were headed in the right direction,” he said. And having more resources at its disposal freed up the team to focus on more strategic work, such as developing new system features.

In addition, Regis used the extended engagement to upskill its in-house developers on the Kubernetes environment—a critical benefit for a company that operates a small staff. “Rather than having me as the only person comfortable enough with the back end to work on the software, now we have multiple people who understand how it works,” Stufflebeam said.

Beyond the improvements identified during the performance consulting portion of the engagement, Regis derived great value from the relationship. “Now we have a partner we can tap into, with more experience standing up large- scale system infrastructures than we’ve had to date,” Janov said.

"Now we have a partner we can tap into, with more experience standing up large-scale system infrastructures than we’ve had to date."

Throughout the engagement, the Regis team found SuperOrbital to be a strong partner and a great backstop to an already-stretched staff. “They’re very personable and they have the patience to teach, which makes them good consultants,” Janov said. “They’re competent and accessible, and they provided a valuable service with a very high standard.”

Stufflebeam echoes those sentiments. “SuperOrbital was very helpful and knowledgeable. They had an answer to just about every situation we presented. And if we came up with something they had never seen before, they helped us work through it faster than we could on our own.”

The ease of working together proved an added benefit that Regis appreciated. “It’s good when you can find people who are competent,” Janov said. “It’s even better when you can find people who are competent and easy and fun to work with. SuperOrbital has the secret sauce in that respect."