Buying a Posit license is just the beginning. Data science teams need efficient deployment of Posit products to work without hassle.

Infrastructure as Code. Scalable Posit Deployment.

Here is the story of how the Appsilon team helped an international Tech company
with Infrastructure-as-Code deployment of Posit products and R Shiny development

Appsilon Value Added

Introduced Posit’s Package Manager

R Shiny Guidelines site for Shiny app development

Adjusting pkgdown on client’s internal GitHub infrastructure 

R Shiny app development support

Technologies: Terraform, Ansible

Reusable deployment infrastructure of Posit Products 

Client Objectives

Appsilon was tasked with building a scalable and reliable Posit infrastructure, including Package Manager, Connect, and Workbench. This aimed to streamline deployment and leverage internal products, allowing the customer to effortlessly deploy Posit products without the need for external assistance. 

“Our goal was to help the client representative, who is a Posit evangelist. The client wanted to be able to offer Posit products to other teams within the company. This was not possible with out-of-the-box Posit solutions. Appsilon’s work was crucial to help customers succeed with Posit. We delivered Posit products as infrastructure as code.”

– Michal Parkola, Engineering Manager

What Appsilon Identified

While working with the client, we identified the need for R Shiny consulting and development.

Type of Work Delivered

Infrastructure

R Shiny Development

R Shiny Development

R Shiny Consulting

Scope of the Project Delivered

Reusable deployment infrastructure of Posit Workbench, Connect, and Package Manager (infrastructure as code)

R Shiny app development support including but not limited to dedicated theme for R Shiny applications, R Markdown reports and pkgdown websites, template for R Shiny projects, and performance improvements of existing dashboards

R Shiny Guidelines – a website with recommendations on how to develop Shiny applications; how to make fast apps and use existing infrastructure

Adjusting pkgdown to work on client’s internal GitHub infrastructure

Tracking active Posit Connect users; an automated job that counts active users on all Posit Connect instances that fall under the flex license used by the client

Adjusting pkgdown to work on client’s internal GitHub infrastructure

Annual Product Review

Showcasing how Posit products support their goal of building transparent, accessible, and performant data science products

Our scripts enable quick and effortless Posit product(s) installation in just minutes

Reusable templates make it easy to create R Shiny solutions for widespread internal adoption

We train and support data scientists in developing and deploying R Shiny applications

The amount of Posit product users increased

We simplify cross-team use of Posit products

Partnership Key Objectives

Posit Connect

1. Create a deployment strategy and architecture for Posit Connect
2. Define deployment approaches based on the team(s)’ main use cases (e.g., number of users, dashboard size, etc.)
3. Define the number of Connect (RSC) instances (e.g., dev, prod, ETL, etc.)
4. Set performance and evaluation metrics for RSC instances and dashboards
5. Define the general requirements (software and hardware) for deploying RSC on EKS
6. Prepare database connections
7. Define the requirements drivers and dependencies

Posit Package Manager

Ensure CRAN repositories for RSC and RSW default to correct internal CRAN mirrors (including those with internal packages)

Posit Workbench

  1. Create a deployment strategy and architecture for setting Posit Workbench
  2. Define the requirements to deploy Workbench and the required resources (EKS or equivalent)
  3. Define container requirements for maximum reproducibility and portability

Posit Connect

Create comprehensive documentation to ensure  the reproducibility of the installation and deployment process

Authentication

Efficient, scalable authentication using IDMS Group and admin control using Access Manager

UI customization

Define a customized template for R Shiny apps

Review from the Client

“We needed to have a way of building stable data products, but we didn’t have a team that specialized in infrastructure as code or Cloud deployments. We also wanted to be more efficient and reduce the amount of time between an idea and the deployment of a data product. Standing up the platform in itself is a challenge that no one on my team had the skills to do, so we decided to hire Appsilon to help us”

“The best thing about working with Appsilon is that they seem to have a very well-established set of processes when it comes to managing a product. This dovetails into the fact that they are really great at documenting, which is something that we specifically wanted from them for this engagement. We essentially asked them to document the project well enough so that we won’t need their services anymore in the future — and they’ve done exactly that. Overall, I’m very happy with the amazing work they’ve done so far.”

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