• Benchling is a vertical B2B SaaS company that builds cloud software for biologists. • With hundreds of engineers supporting scientists who rely on the platform for critical research workflows, Benchling operates a large and complex cloud environment spanning more than 165,000 cloud resources. • As the company scaled, developers were dealing with 30-minute Terraform plans, lots of manual coordination, and then having to babysit many of their releases. • Their workflows were a huge drain on engineering time and energy. • To address this, Benchling changed how it managed infrastructure as code: No more Terraform runs on individual machines. • They wanted centralized governance and execution.
Article Summaries:
- Benchling, a B2B SaaS platform for biologists, managed over 165,000 cloud resources across 350 Terraform workspaces. Early on, developers ran Terraform plans and applies locally, leading to 30‑minute plans, manual coordination, and extensive “dibs” coordination via Slack. These practices caused significant engineering toil and slow, error‑prone releases. In response, Benchling adopted HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) Terraform, centralizing execution, state management, and governance. The shift eliminated manual coordination, reduced plan times, and cut 8,000 developer hours. The freed capacity was redirected to higher‑value tasks such as disaster‑recovery automation and cost‑optimization initiatives.
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