Transforming Smart Home Experiences: How Peel Scaled to 165+ Million Users with Fission Labs
Introduction
In today’s digital era, seamless smart home automation is no longer a luxury—it’s an expectation. Peel, a global leader in smart home control solutions, sought to revolutionize the way users interact with their connected devices. However, scaling to support over 165 million users across diverse regions posed significant challenges. That’s where Fission Labs stepped in, helping Peel build a robust, high-performance Android app that could effortlessly manage vast amounts of data, ensure minimal latency, and maintain uninterrupted service.
The Challenge
Peel needed a powerful and self-sustainable smart home control platform capable of handling an enormous user base and managing complex Electronic Program Guide (EPG) content from various global providers. Their primary challenges included:
- Scalability: Expanding the application to support millions of users worldwide.
- Data Management: Processing and managing vast volumes of EPG content from diverse sources, formats, and languages.
- High-Performance APIs: Building a low-latency, highly available API system that could seamlessly handle millions of requests per second.
- Service Reliability: Ensuring near-zero downtime and automatic recovery during outages.
The Solution
To address these challenges, Fission Labs developed an advanced cloud infrastructure and backend system tailored for Peel’s specific needs. Our solution included:
Global API Distribution for Low Latency
- API components were distributed across five AWS regions with multi-availability zones.
- Implemented API Gateway with regional endpoints to optimize response times and ensure secure, scalable access to API services.
High-Throughput, Low-Latency EPG Processing
- Developed an in-memory solution using custom-tuned High-Memory EC2 instances capable of handling up to 8K requests per second.
- Leveraged Elastic Beanstalk with auto-scaling to manage global launch events, efficiently serving 35+ million concurrent users.
Optimized Database Architecture
- Designed a distributed database system with MySQL master-slave replication for low-latency read/writes.
- Custom-built AMIs enabled high-volume EPG content ingestion at regular intervals, ensuring seamless data processing.
Performance Enhancements through Caching and Edge Computing
- Leveraged CloudFront for edge caching, reducing API response times from 3 seconds to under 100 milliseconds.
- Implemented a recommendation engine by crunching terabyte-scale EPG content using a combination of M4 and C3 class EC2 clusters.
Disaster Recovery & Auto-Healing Mechanism
- Designed CloudFormation scripts to replicate Peel’s entire cloud infrastructure in a nearby AWS region within three minutes in case of outages.
- Route53 traffic routing ensured uninterrupted service availability.
The Impact
FissionLabs' expertise in cloud-native application development helped Peel achieve remarkable results:
- 99% Reduction in Latency: API response times dropped from 3 seconds to just 200 milliseconds.
- Scalability & Reliability: Successfully handling 100+ million requests daily with seamless load distribution.
- Cost Optimization: Monthly cloud service expenses reduced from $120K to approximately $40K through the strategic use of spot instances and dynamic EC2 cluster management.
- Unparalleled Disaster Recovery: The ability to replicate the entire cloud setup within three minutes, ensuring near-zero downtime.
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Client Testimonial
"Fission Labs focused on what is important for Peel and almost always beat our expectations. They have helped the cause of Peel immensely."
— Thiru, Founder and CEO of Peel
Conclusion
By leveraging cutting-edge cloud technology, distributed API architectures, and intelligent caching mechanisms, Fission Labs empowered Peel to seamlessly scale their smart home control platform while optimizing costs. Our strategic approach ensured that millions of users worldwide could enjoy a frictionless, responsive, and reliable smart home experience.