Evosus Accelerates Deployments by 75% to Support 3x More Customers with EPI-USE and AWS

Evosus builds business management software for specialty retailers that juggle inventory, service teams using mobile apps, and in-store transactions. The company’s flagship product, LOU, is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform used by hundreds of small to mid-sized businesses to manage day-to-day operations. As customer adoption grew, so did the demands on infrastructure, particularly around performance, automation, and scale. “We kept scaling up,” said Steve Hawkins, CTO of Evosus. “But the system was designed to scale everything together, even when we only needed more power for the database. That wasn’t sustainable.”

The existing environment had served the business well, but the team saw an opportunity to evolve their approach to better support long-term goals. Manual backups, for example, had been sufficient in the early days, but were now time-consuming as data volumes grew—sometimes taking up to three hours. Without streamlined access to system controls, capabilities like real-time reporting and automated deployments were harder to implement. The development team wanted to modernize pipelines, experiment with new front-end frameworks, and deliver more data-driven features, all without increasing operational burden. “We knew what we wanted to build,” Hawkins said. “Moving to a more flexible, scalable environment would give us the freedom to get there.” Evosus aimed to create a foundation that aligned with how its teams work and how its customers grow—one built for performance, control, and continued innovation.

Evosus decided to move to a Mendix Private cloud environment built on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The move would go beyond a lift and shift, giving the team more architectural flexibility for the future. With guidance from Mendix, the application development platform Evosus uses, the company connected with AWS Premier Partner EPI-USE for support in the transition. The collaboration quickly became a strategic extension of the Evosus team. “The team at EPI-USE felt like an extension of our own,” said Adrian Amposta, senior QA engineer and release manager at Evosus. “They listened, asked the right questions, and brought ideas to the table we hadn’t even considered. They challenged us to think bigger and built the foundation for where we wanted to go. Honestly, it was one of the smoothest, most collaborative projects I’ve ever worked on.”

Together, Evosus and EPI-USE designed a Kubernetes-based infrastructure using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), which gave Evosus precise control over how and where to scale. They also deployed Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL, with a read replica to enable real-time analytics. This removed the need for manual backups, leading to faster, non-disruptive reporting. To improve operations and reduce manual work, Evosus and EPI-USE built automated CI/CD pipelines with AWS CodePipeline and defined infrastructure as code using Terraform. They also used AWS Control Tower to establish secure, multi-account governance. This setup aligned with the team’s DevOps goals and gave them a consistent, scalable environment. “We didn’t want to become AWS experts overnight,” said Ryan Mills, application architect at Evosus. “Now we don’t have to—we have a platform that does what we need and a partner we trust to keep it running.”

With improved visibility and control, Evosus also modernized monitoring, identity, and networking using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Application Load Balancer. These changes gave the team a clearer view into system health and more confidence in how their services connect and scale. “It felt like going from a prefab kit to a custom build,” said Dan McManus, CEO of Evosus. “Now we have the tools to innovate on our own terms.”

The move to an AWS private cloud gave Evosus unprecedented control over its environment. By separating compute and database resources and implementing intelligent scaling, Evosus implemented a scalable environment built for growth for years to come. Deployment cycles became 75 percent faster, dropping from around five hours to only two, thanks to a new CI/CD pipeline and automation. Backup processes that once took up to three hours were replaced with snapshot-style backups that complete in only 15 to 20 minutes. “We used to stay up all night managing releases and backups,” said Hawkins. “Now it’s minutes instead of hours. That’s real time we’ve won back.”

The architectural shift also unlocked scalability and stability. “AWS gave us the infrastructure we needed to scale on our terms, without compromise,” said Hawkins. “We’ve tripled our platform’s capacity. We can go from supporting hundreds of customers to thousands without overspending on unused compute. Finally, we have the control and flexibility we’d been missing.” Application performance improved by 40 percent, particularly during seasonal usage spikes. “The system used to buckle during our busiest times,” said Amposta. “Now it adapts in real time and our customers get a consistent experience.” With 99.99 percent availability, Evosus can confidently meet the uptime expectations of the businesses that rely on LOU to run every aspect of their operations.

Compliance and visibility also improved. The team uses AWS Control Tower and observability tools to track backup frequency, audit configurations, and provide detailed records for SOC 2 reviews. “It’s the kind of visibility that makes compliance a lot less painful,” said Mills. With less time spent troubleshooting infrastructure or justifying gaps to auditors, the team can focus on roadmap priorities and new products like LOU Analytics. “We now have the breathing room to build what we want to build,” McManus said. “And the confidence that our systems won’t get in the way when we do.”