SEMrush Searches Out Automated Juniper Infrastructure for Rapid Innovation

Data-driven marketing helps companies reach the right person at the right time with the right offer. Marketers use the SEMrush platform to optimize their visibility across key digital channels and create engaging content for their prospects and customers

“Our mission is to make online marketing better,” says Stepan Shirokikh, VP of infrastructure and general manager of the company’s operations in Czech Republic. “We want every customer to be able to improve their marketing by using our tools to achieve online visibility and keep experimenting.”

SEMrush has grown rapidly since its inception in 2008. Global spending on digital advertising is growing by leaps and bounds, and is expected to reach $322 billion in 2020 and double to $640 billion by 2027.

SEMrush wanted to innovate rapidly, with development teams creating new features and products for its digital marketing platform. The company also wanted to control costs as it grew. Relying on a data center provider had provided agility at first, but over time, the slower processes of their old data center model threatened the company’s speed of innovation.

Before, we would have to open a ticket, wait for the data center provider to make the change, and then check the result,” Shirokikh says. “It took too many people to work the tickets.”

Also, recurring costs paid to the data center provider were increasing as data volumes grew. “Our applications are data-intensive, so it is financially preferable for us to host our applications on premises,” Shirokikh says.

“Online marketing tools is quite a competitive business,” Shirokikh says. “We need to run fast in order to invent new products and experiment.”

SEMrush’s data on search volume, correlation, website traffic, and digital trends is massive—measured in petabytes—and constantly changing. A single customer report could be 20 GB.

“The amount of data is growing exponentially,” Shirokikh says. “With Juniper, we have a reliable network to allow data to move back and forth to customers.”

SEMrush’s new data center is ready for the heavy demands of marketing analytics today and in the future. “Our new Juniper network should serve us for the next five years and allow our business to more effectively deliver on customers’ data analytics needs,” Shirokikh says.

The SEMrush infrastructure team had previously used Juniper Networks SRX Series Services Gateways for its firewalls, and expanding the relationship to include data center routing, switching, and orchestration was smooth.

Juniper and SEMrush worked closely together on a proof-ofconcept test to validate the data center fabric design and ensure a positive business outcome.

“It’s really easy and pleasant to work with Juniper,” Shirokikh says. “The Juniper team worked to understand what was happening inside our business to make sure we had the best solution.”