How AWS and MongoDB Atlas Power Unqork’s No-Code Movement in the Enterprise

To make the case for highly functional, no-code application development for enterprise businesses in regulated industries, Unqork had to be strategic about how it structured its platform and positioned it in the market. Tapping into the benefits of a cloud-native platform, Unqork chose to operate on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and host its databases on MongoDB Atlas. This deeply integrated joint solution could accommodate the speed, storage, and computing power the company needed to deliver on its vision, as well as provide customers the ability to meet compliance standards without compromising agility, scalability, and reliability.

Today, traditional development is burdensome. Skill shortages make it difficult to hire talent, it’s easy to go over budget, and long-term application maintenance can be resource-heavy, making it harder to justify the investment.

Unqork saw significant potential in bringing its no-code application development with a completely visual interface to the enterprise. The Unqork platform allows businesses to build complex apps and workflows rapidly—without writing a line of code. These complex workflows can ingest data from multiple upstream and legacy sources at scale, unify the data in one platform, and push it to internal applications or modern third-party services—at a lower cost.

To move from idea to a fully functional, cloud-native product quickly, members of the leadership team had to solve several challenges. First, they needed to show potential customers that a no-code approach with a drag-and-drop interface was capable of producing complex, high-quality software. The company also needed to demonstrate that the platform could offer stringent security that businesses in highly regulated industries—such as financial services and healthcare—require. Finally, because the apps built on Unqork serve large businesses that collect vast amounts of data, the company needed a powerful cloud host that offered unlimited speed and scalability paired with a flexible, reliable database.

Unqork needed to grow quickly and knew that the depth and breadth of AWS services, as well as the maturity of the products that AWS offers, would not only allow them to scale rapidly but would also accommodate the regulatory needs of different industries. "We are able to set up AWS services and products with ease," said Nick Gamble, Head of Evangelism at Unqork. “It is the most complete platform available to meet enterprise needs."

As the team built out its platform, it increased functionality using a long list of AWS tools, including AWS CloudFormation to enable the modeling, provisioning, and management of AWS and third-party resources. Unqork also uses Amazon SageMaker to help customers build, train, and deploy machine learning models for any use case.

Unqork uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) object storage that can retrieve any amount of data from anywhere to accommodate the volume of data that runs through client apps.

Large businesses have complex software structures and a sizeable customer base, which has typically forced them to choose between agility and scalability. To change that, Unqork needed to provide customers with a seamlessly scalable solution. And because Unqork serves so many different industries that have a wide variety of use cases for the platform, the company must also offer suitable flexibility around data structures.

To better execute on Unqork’s value proposition of allowing customers to use data from the apps they’ve built, Unqork turned to MongoDB Atlas on AWS Marketplace. After conducting its due diligence, the leadership team knew it wanted to use MongoDB Atlas since it had successfully used the database service in prior roles to solve business challenges at various Fortune 500 companies.

MongoDB Atlas allows Unqork's users to store data of any structure and provides full indexing support and sharing capabilities. Additionally, MongoDB Atlas serves as the data store of Unqork’s declarative representation of a software application: the codeless architecture open standard. As a result, Unqork and its customers can glean and deliver insights from data that would not have been possible using a traditional coding approach.

Gamble also credits the MongoDB for Startups program, which provided credits, one-on-one technical advice, and co-marketing opportunities which helped them grow from startup to established software provider.

“Using MongoDB Atlas was a clear decision for us as a startup because we knew we were going to evolve fast and needed something flexible that could adapt to our organizational changes, and those of our customers,” Gamble said.

Gamble added that running on AWS and MongoDB put customers who were new to no-code at ease, making it easier to gain trust in the market. “One hundred percent, having AWS and MongoDB behind our solution helped customers say ‘yes,’” said Gamble.

Unqork has customers around the globe, requiring compliance with different data residency laws. To help its customers comply with these standards, Unqork leverages the inherent security of AWS infrastructure and the cloud provider’s shared responsibility model.

"Running on top of AWS and MongoDB Atlas has made it possible to successfully navigate the security requirements of highly regulated industries,” Gamble said. “The number of clients we have in the insurance industry, for example, just goes to show the confidence our customers have in this joint solution.”

Thanks to the interoperability of AWS tools built on the AWS Cloud, Unqork customers utilizing AWS PrivateLink through Unqork ensure private connectivity between their Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) and services hosted on AWS or on-premises, without exposing data to the internet.

Controls built into MongoDB Atlas added an additional layer of security to Unqork’s platform. Customer database instances are deployed in a unique VPC to ensure network isolation, implement always-on authentication, access management features, and encrypt data at rest and in transit.

“AWS and MongoDB have the capabilities to help customers around the globe meet constantly evolving data privacy and data residency laws,” Gamble said. “And AWS managed services ensure that once the data securely gets to a database, it remains secure.”

Unqork stores data and client assets in cross-regional databases and can run point-in-time restores with MongoDB Atlas. With the robust disaster recovery and worldwide availability zones of AWS, along with MongoDB Atlas’s multi-regional fault tolerance for cross-regional replication, Unqork’s customers don’t have to worry about downtime or lags.

With AWS Global Accelerator, a networking service that optimizes traffic to minimize latency, Unqork’s customers experience the benefits of low latency and minimal downtime, dramatically accelerating app builds and lowering total costs.

MongoDB Atlas enables self-healing, easily modifiable clusters that are made up of geographically distributed database instances to prevent a single point of failure—meaning no downtime for Unqork’s users. The database program also offers reliability enhancements for mission-critical production databases, such as continuous backups and point-in-time recovery.

“Giving clients the ability to spin environments up or down and being able to pull in more bulk data with the same level of performance—those are benefits that you're going to get with MongoDB Atlas,” Gamble said.

Unqork continues to help businesses around the world break free of the challenges that come with code. Because the platform draws from the security, reliability, and flexibility that AWS and MongoDB offer, the company can onboard customers in any industry at scale. For example, Unqork now supports up to 100,000 government users, removing the need for—and cost of—the designated technology teams that government clients have historically required.

One of the world's largest life insurance carriers cut development time for a custom eApp to four months from a year using Unqork. The carrier was also able to provide a great customer experience by speeding up traditionally lengthy application processes. Policy issuance times, for instance, dropped to less than 48 hours, resulting in an increase of applications. With the infrastructure of AWS and MongoDB Atlas behind the Unqork platform, the carrier can effectively handle growth, sustaining a 140% increase month-over-month application volume without issues.

One of the biggest areas of focus for Unqork in the future is to expand the platform’s self-service capabilities, something that’s possible thanks to AWS performance monitoring and the index recommendations of MongoDB Atlas.