WaveMaker → Google Cloud Platform
Newline Financial’s Future-Proof Web App
- Client
- Newline Financial
- Industry
- Specialty Finance / Tax Liens
- Service
- Cloud Migration to GCP | Ruby on Rails Re-platform | Containerization & Kubernetes | Vendor-Agnostic Architecture
Overview
Since 2013, Newline Financial has provided specialty finance and property rehabilitation to property owners and counties. Newline purchases and services tax liens nationwide using a team of professionals, technologies, and backend analytics.
To optimize efficiency, Newline launched an internal web app to collect taxes and repay them to property owners with interest. While in early growth stages, Newline chose to develop the app on the WaveMaker Platform, hosted on Azure cloud, to save time and money. As Newline began to grow, the WaveMaker Platform — which made app creation initially easy — turned restrictive and problematic, blocking new features and functionality. Newline turned to Sphere Software to fix it.
WaveMaker Limits Surfaced
Logic Coupled to the Database
The current app architecture put most of the logic in the database layer (as stored procedures) — making it hard to decouple the logic when migrating.
Hard to Experiment
New functionality experiments were complicated by the platform’s structure — the bar to try anything new was always too high.
Vendor Lock
Newline was unable to alter the database engine without re-engineering core logic — a textbook vendor lock that limited future choices.
Platform-Specific Development Process
WaveMaker affected the development process and locked the team into platform-specific solutions, even when better tools were available.
How We Solved It
After deep discovery and analysis, Sphere recommended migrating Newline from WaveMaker to a more scalable and robust Google Cloud Platform implementation, written in Ruby on Rails. To avoid disrupting the business, the migration was structured as a gradual, experiment-driven rollout.
1. Shadow Apps Sharing the Same Database
Sphere implemented some functionality as a separate app that shadowed the current app parts while using the same database as the main source of data — proving each piece in production before it owned the workflow.
2. Increment, Don’t Big-Bang
Once the experiment proved successful, Sphere transitioned the entire web app in increments to the new platform — keeping risk low and the team confident at each step.
3. Containerized on GCP Kubernetes
The entire app was containerized and moved onto a GCP Kubernetes cluster, which auto-scales in response to demand. Open-source backend (Ruby on Rails) and Kubernetes mean the implementation is fully vendor-agnostic.
Key Outcomes
+20% Performance
Switching from MS Azure SQL Server to GCP SQL added up to 20% more performance, simply by using a standard tier.
5–10% Cost Savings
Compared to Azure, using GCP resulted in a cost savings of 5–10% on the same workload.
Auto-Scaling Scalability
A GCP Kubernetes cluster responds quickly to auto-scale events and meets demand instantly — Newline can roll out new features without re-architecting.
Vendor-Agnostic Stack
Open-source Ruby on Rails plus Kubernetes mean Newline is no longer locked into a single platform — they own their stack.
The Results
Sphere uses an internal framework that helps deliver better and more predictable results in hosting solutions. Receiving the most current technologies and expertise in development and deployment allows Sphere clients like Newline Financial to bring more stability and predictability to their business and customers — and a future-proof platform that scales as the company does.
