Interview Questions for Kieran Kilbride-Singh, Head of Product Marketing at Ably
Ably, a London-based company, has been delivering more than six trillion events since its inception in 2016. The platform, designed for predictable low latency, ultra-high availability, and message integrity, operates on a global scale by leveraging a distributed, cloud-based infrastructure.
The infrastructure includes distributed data centers globally, a WebSocket-based publish/subscribe messaging architecture, message guarantees such as exactly-once delivery and strict ordering, high availability with a 99.999% uptime SLA, scalable real-time infrastructure, and APIs and SDKs compatible with all popular platforms.
This structure allows Ably to deploy a globally distributed pub/sub messaging network built on WebSocket technology, supporting millions of messages per month and hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections. This network provides the foundation for real-time chat, presence tracking, and event-driven architectures at scale for businesses like HubSpot and I7Live.
Key infrastructure components include globally distributed edge nodes, WebSocket and HTTP/2 transport, a publish/subscribe messaging layer, scalability and dynamic capacity, robust APIs and SDKs, monitoring and SLA management, and more.
As the adoption of real-time data synchronization and synchronized digital experiences grows, Ably aims to abstract the complexity away for developers, allowing them to build the digital experiences of the future without worrying about infrastructure. Ably powers synchronized digital experiences in real-time over a secure global edge cloud network.
The platform underpins use cases like virtual live events, real-time financial information, and synchronized collaboration in documents. Ably's Series B funding will allow the company to focus on its mission, removing complexity for developers in building real-time digital experiences and providing an unrivaled quality of service for end-users.
The velocity of data is an important asset because consumers expect real-time digital experiences as standard, and synchronized data in real-time is business-critical for many organizations. The use cases for real-time data synchronization span across multiple industries, including EdTech, automotive, logistics and mobility, B2B and developer platforms, healthcare, IoT and connected devices, sports and media, social media and audience engagement, gaming, e-commerce and retail, and more.
Delivering data in milliseconds requires infrastructure that can continue to operate even if components should fail, can scale up and down on-demand, and has rigorous uptime guarantees. Ably guarantees the delivery of trillions of events per year for millions of devices worldwide. The infrastructure is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale and is distributed across 15+ core routing data centers and 205+ edge acceleration PoPs.
As more of our digital lives play out in real-time, the opportunity for Ably grows larger than when the company was started five years ago. Kieran Kilbride-Singh, the head of product marketing at Ably, emphasizes the company's continued strive to provide an unrivaled quality of service for real-time data synchronization.
- Ably, a London-based company, leverages data-and-cloud-computing technology to deliver trillions of events since its inception, providing a global, real-time messaging network built on WebSocket technology for businesses like HubSpot and I7Live.
- This network, designed for predictable low latency, ultra-high availability, and message integrity, supports millions of messages per month and hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections, underpinned by distributed data centers and edge nodes.
- As more of our digital lives require real-time interactions, Ably aims to abstract the infrastructure's complexity, allowing developers to build innovative digital experiences with AI, IoT, and the Internet of Things without worrying about data synchronization issues.
- The platform's infrastructure is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale, guaranteeing the delivery of trillions of events per year for millions of devices worldwide, with rigorous uptime guarantees and distributed across 15+ core routing data centers and 205+ edge acceleration PoPs.
