Rackspace^® (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, today announced that Zipline Labs, a mobile money movement platform, is leveraging Rackspace Managed Cloud and DevOps Automation Service to power its application and API. With continuous deployment and monitoring, Zipline achieves optimal uptime and performance so it can deliver a seamless, real-time messaging experience to users.

Released in the Apple App Store and Google Play in May 2015, Zipline is a mobile app that aims to make sharing money with friends as easy as sending a picture. The app is the first bank-compliant messaging platform that connects directly to users’ bank accounts, allowing them to send and receive gifts and reimbursements, in groups or individually, in real time and for free.

“When people download our app, they typically download it with a friend or group of friends, and they want to see their conversation happening in real-time, including any money transfers,” said Kirk Bowman, founder of Zipline Labs. “Therefore, high availability and performance are our primary concerns at Zipline. Rackspace DevOps Automation Service allows us to achieve the depth of scale needed for our application to perform quickly and consistently, and the breadth of scale needed for our application to maintain uptime as it grows exponentially with our recent release on the iOS and Android app stores. And with Fanatical Support^®, we have access to a group of experts who operate as an extension of our IT team with extensive knowledge of our business and application.”

According to an IDC report, “IDC predicts 2015 will be a tipping point for the mobile payment industry as standardisation and technological innovation in hardware and security measures drive greater adoption. As this industry matures, there will be greater convergence of mobile payment solutions with cloud, data analytics and social technologies, generating new business value proposition and unique industry-specific use cases for businesses and merchants.”¹

While many startups view DevOps as an option for the future, Zipline was built on Rackspace DevOps from its inception, ramping up its first API in 2014. Rackspace DevOps Automation Service allows Zipline to standardise efforts like infrastructure deployment to achieve faster innovation, accelerated time to market and improved development quality, so it can scale as the app’s user base grows without compromising performance.

As a small startup, Zipline field-tests its application by pushing new code into production and making necessary updates as it receives feedback in real time. Rackspace DevOps tools and support help Zipline achieve real-time commit histories by deploying fixes to any problem identified in the server environment in a matter of seconds.

“Zipline has revolutionised the way we think about sharing money by enabling it to move at Internet speed and between multiple groups of people,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, GM of Rackspace DevOps. “This type of application requires powerful technology and expertise to make it successful. DevOps is iterative, constantly evolving and updating in real time like many born-on-the-cloud companies, so it is the perfect fit for businesses like Zipline that want an IT methodology conducive to the pace of their growth. With Rackspace DevOps Automation Service, Rackspace manages these DevOps tools so our customers can focus on innovating and growing their core businesses.”