Why Soundtrack your Brand Switched From Apollo to Cosmo

Are you looking for an Open Source Graph Manager? Cosmo is the most complete solution including Schema Registry, Router, Studio, Metrics, Analytics, Distributed Tracing, Breaking Change detection and more.

We have experienced significant performance enhancements for our most complex queries since switching from Apollo to Cosmo. The query planning in Cosmo is more advanced and intelligently optimized. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand

Soundtrack your Brand is a company that provides a music streaming platform specifically designed for businesses. It offers curated playlists, licensing, and royalty management services to create a tailored audio experience for companies in various industries. Think Spotify, but with the focus on delivering music solutions for commercial use.

They've always been at the forefront of technology adoption, even being an early adopter of GraphQL before it gained widespread popularity. They embraced GraphQL and Apollo GraphQL as their preferred tools for data management and API development.

Despite being one of the earliest adopters of Apollo GraphOS, Soundtrack your Brand, had a divergence in opinion regarding the change in Apollo's non open-source licensing and business model. As a company that values their alignment with GraphQL principles, Soundtrack your Brand embarked on a journey to find a solution that better resonated with their GraphQL views. Ultimately, this exploration led them to choose WunderGraph Cosmo as the preferred alternative

Unpacking the Concerns Surrounding Apollo GraphOS

For us, it's very important that GraphQL in it's entirety remains a open ecosystem and we were seeing parts of the market moving in a completely different direction." -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand

Fredrik and his team were excited to adopt Apollo GraphQL due to its reputation as one of the pioneering solutions for working with GraphQL. At the time, it was among the few open-source options available, and they appreciated the extensive tooling and community support provided by Apollo.

However, they realized that the company's business direction gradually shifted away from the open-source ethos they valued. Apollo had started introducing premium features and services not part of the open-source framework. This divergence from open-source and extreme pricing hike left Fredrik and his team concerned about their project's long-term viability and compatibility.

With nearly a decade of experience with adopting and working with GraphQL. Fredrik understood the direction GraphQL should be going and where other vendors were taking it. However, after engaging with the WunderGraph Team, they quickly realized that we share the same values for where we want GraphQL to go as a technology. Cosmo provided an easy migration away from Apollo while staying true to GraphQL's licensing, which is remaining open source.

WunderGraph Cosmo: The Open-Source GraphQL Federation Solution

WunderGraph had the same vision to allow GraphQL to remain open, standardized, and competitive. They were also able to technically deliver a solution that much more closely fit our needs. With both those boxes checked, it was basically a no-brainer to migrate over. We made the decision in a week. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand

The move to Cosmo has significantly benefited Soundtrack your Brand's operations by improving performance, increasing productivity, and saving costs.

Improved Performance

Cosmo's superior query planning capabilities have resulted in significant performance improvements for Soundtrack your Brand. Complex queries now execute faster and more efficiently, enhancing the overall user experience by providing quicker data retrieval.

Maintained Productivity and Expanded Possibilities with Studio:

Soundtrack Your Brand's productivity level, achieved through federation, has been successfully maintained with Cosmo's Studio. Additionally, the introduction of federated subscriptions has opened up new possibilities for the company, further enhancing its operations.

Autonomous Team Shipments to End Customers

Cosmo's architecture allows multiple teams at Soundtrack your Brand to deliver their products to end customers autonomously. This autonomy eliminates bottlenecks and enhances efficiency, resulting in streamlined and collaborative development workflows.

Flexible Deployment Options and Cost Savings:

Soundtrack your Brand benefited from Cosmo's flexible deployment options, enabling them to optimize their infrastructure costs. By choosing specific platform components, they have achieved a balance between performance and affordability, making cost savings without compromising quality or functionality.

Speed and Innovation:

The innovation rate that the WunderGraph team is keeping up with is mind blowing. During our time together, the team has released numerous features that are quite cutting edge and that I haven't seen from any other supplier on the market. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand

An Easy migration from Apollo to Cosmo

We have a quite complex schema that has been growing over the past 7 to 8 years. During our migration to Cosmo, we worked very closely with the WunderGraph engineers to debug issues with our most complex queries. In the end we discovered that we had some errors in our schema, that our previous provider did not notice or report to us. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand

Migrating from Apollo to Cosmo proved to be a trivial and enjoyable journey for the Soundtrack team; let's delve into the key benefits that they highlighted during their migration and highlight the difference it has made in their schema issue detection, collaboration, setup time, response time, and overall satisfaction.

Setting up Cosmo and running it only took the Soundtrack team a day's work. During the migration, Soundtrack discovered that some of their most complex queries needed to be fixed. While working with the WunderGraph Engineers, the team was able to fix edge cases and issues where Apollo did not previously catch federation issues.

The migration process was made easy through the close collaboration between the Soundtrack team and our experts at Cosmo. We worked closely to identify and address various use cases, ensuring their specific requirements were met. This collaborative approach enabled us to tap directly into the organization, resulting in faster resolution and improved user experience.

One of the most highlighted aspects of this migration was the rapid response time and resolution provided by Cosmo. By having direct access to our engineers, Soundtrack your Brand experienced a significant reduction in turnaround time for issue resolution. This increased their operational efficiency and was a source of delight for their team.

Furthermore, the collaboration with our engineers throughout the migration process was refreshing to the Soundtrack Team. Unlike relying solely on account executives, directly interacting with our engineers allowed them to gain deeper insights into the technical aspects and ensure their requirements were met accurately. This direct collaboration fostered a sense of empowerment and a strengthened partnership between Soundtrack, your brand, and WunderGraph Cosmo.

Final Thoughts

Cosmo's open source solution allowed Soundtrack your Brand to easily migrate away from Apollo GraphQL and enjoy benefits such as improved performance, flexible deployment options, cost savings and much more. To experience WunderGraph Cosmo, sign up for Cosmo's free tier and start building (no credit card needed)

The Cosmo team was extremely supportive and helpful, and now we've been running Cosmo in production for a couple months and everything has been fantastic so far -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack Your Brand