Driving faster delivery and reduced overhead with Gearset’s complete DevOps lifecycle platform
Ping Identity is a global leader in identity and access management software. Identity is the foundation of digital growth, and Ping works with large organizations to protect users and their digital interactions.
Salesforce sits at the heart of Ping’s commercial operations, enabling them to manage partner relationships, customer data, and key business processes. With so much vital data flowing through Salesforce, reliability and security are mission-critical.
Marko Self, who leads Salesforce DevOps at Ping Identity, and Senior DevOps Engineer Andrew Kutter shared with us how the team transformed their DevOps process.
“There’s a lot at stake if we don’t manage the DevOps lifecycle carefully,” says Salesforce Development Manager Marko Self. “We’re a security company. We can’t release bad code, and we can’t release security vulnerabilities. We need our codebase clean.”
Unable to scale with DIY DevOps
Marko’s team previously managed Salesforce deployments through a homegrown system built around the Salesforce CLI, but it was slow, manual, and hard to maintain.
The team used custom Salesforce fields to track changes, then manually deployed the changes through change sets or the CLI. The process was inefficient, created visibility gaps, and even led to rework.
“We didn’t have a good way to track everything or deploy without stepping on other developers’ toes,” Marko says. “We would sometimes deploy old code, overwrite new code, or remove segments we didn’t intend to, which could impact the business.”
The team needed a solution to remove manual steps, align teams, and provide complete visibility. It would be a new way to orchestrate their entire change management process and beyond.
The search for a complete DevOps solution
Ping Identity discovered Gearset after a team member attended a community conference. After exploring the Gearset platform, they knew it was a great fit.
“When we looked at other DevOps solutions, they just didn’t have the robust feature set we needed,” Marko says. “Gearset offered everything we were looking for.”
From an engineer’s perspective, Gearset stood out for its transparency and control. Senior DevOps Engineer Andrew Kutter explains: “Gearset exposes your entire pipeline from end to end. It gives you the visibility and control to watch a piece of code go from idea to deployment without jumping through a bunch of different components and services.”
To ensure seamless uptake of the platform and alignment with DevOps best practices, the Gearset team had a dedicated onboarding manager who helped them design their software lifecycle and choose the best branching pattern to match existing workflows. “Gearset helped us connect our orgs and work through the platform’s functionality. The support was top-notch,” Marko says.
Support didn’t end after setup. The team relies on Gearset’s responsive in-app support to resolve issues quickly. Whenever the team ran into an issue, they reached out to the support team and received responses within minutes. “The in-app chat is phenomenal,” Marko says. Meanwhile, they’ve partnered with their Customer Success Manager to ensure long-term success with the platform.
“When I joined Ping, a colleague told me, ‘Don’t forget to use Gearset’s support. It’ll change your life.’ And it’s true,” Andrew says.
Transparency and control at scale and speed
When Ping underwent a merger, the team doubled in size. Suddenly, they needed a process that was scalable and ensured visibility and collaboration across their large team.
That’s when they introduced Gearset Pipelines. The CI/CD solution automatically deploys approved changes to their upstream environments, saving hours of manual work. With blocks for non-compliant code and easy back-syncing, Ping Identity now has the peace of mind that they’re working from up-to-date environments and aren’t accidentally releasing insecure or low-quality code.
“Now that we have Pipelines, our process is very streamlined,” Marko explains.
Andrew adds: “The entire pipeline is mapped out visually. You can see every sandbox, everybody’s individual coding environment, and whether each environment is in sync. We can easily add or remove a block or gate so code doesn’t get bottlenecked at one certain stage.”
With Pipelines integrated into GitHub, the team has a single, reliable system for managing their releases.
“Version control is our source of truth and allows us to use GitHub for code merges,” Marko says. “It keeps us efficient and in sync, with everybody in line on the same pipeline. We’re not stepping on each other’s toes anymore. It’s much more efficient and collaborative.”
Meanwhile, Gearset’s nightly syncs ensure environments remain clean and consistent while deployments are faster than ever.
“Before, deployments could take days. Now, it’s continuous,” Marko says. “As soon as something’s ready and tested, it ships. Our deployment efficiency is hugely improved.”
CPQ challenges solved
Salesforce CPQ had long been another sticking point for the team. Deploying complex CPQ configurations required manual scripting, which slowed every release.
Before Gearset, admins and developers would load CPQ data into a single sandbox and make changes manually. Because CPQ has a hierarchy and unique IDs, they couldn’t just move that over to production. Instead, they’d have to recreate those changes in UAT and again in production. It took a long time and left too much room for error.
After implementing Gearset CPQ, those worries are gone. The process is automated and part of the regular deployment flow.
“Gearset has changed how we work with CPQ configuration in a huge way,” says Marko. “It’s allowed us to automate and merge all of our changes much more efficiently and collaboratively.”
Gearset’s handling of CPQ hierarchies and dependencies is a huge breakthrough, Marko adds. “Gearset CPQ solves the gap where you have a hierarchy of data that you can’t easily move between sandboxes. It allows you to be much more efficient and actually move the changes you intended to, with ease, from one sandbox to another and eventually to production.”
Staying a step ahead with Observability
Despite having a more streamlined, smoother workflow, issues still arise. It used to be that the team only knew of problems when end users raised support tickets. But now, Gearset has improved the team’s ticketing flow.
“Flow errors would come through email. Over time, that just becomes noise and you lose sight of what’s really happening,” Marko explains.
Now, they use Gearset Observability to proactively monitor and fix errors before they impact the business.
“Gearset Observability captures all of the flow errors, including when they spike and what’s causing them. It gives us full visibility into what’s going on in our org, so we can reduce downtime and tech debt,” Marko says.
Increased efficiency and lower costs
Gearset has transformed Ping Identity’s Salesforce DevOps process into a faster, more efficient, and lower-cost operation.
“We would have a much larger DevOps overhead without Gearset. Instead of one or two DevOps engineers embedded in the team, we’d need a traditional DevOps group,” Andrew says. “Being able to rely on Gearset’s automations allows us to focus on other parts of the business, and be more agile and efficient.”
For Marko, Gearset’s innovation and customer focus sets it apart.
“Gearset is always working on new features,” he says. “It feels like there’s a new pilot almost every month or quarter, which shows how innovative the company is.”
More than a tool, Gearset has become a trusted partner supporting the team’s growth and success.
“It really feels like a partnership,” Marko says. “When we realized we needed to upgrade our DevOps process, Gearset jumped in to help. They have our back. As we move forward and scale our processes, it’s good to know they’ll be alongside us making sure we have everything we need to be a success here at Ping Identity.”
