Imagine Learning is a leading K-12 education company that provides digital curriculum services to schools across the United States. Its mission is to empower teachers to teach more effectively and help students learn efficiently. Operating a platform that serves hundreds of thousands of students daily requires robust infrastructure, and Kubernetes is at the heart of its operations. For Imagine Learning, ensuring their platform is always available and secure is non-negotiable. Downtime disrupts learning, and safeguarding sensitive student data is critical. To overcome these challenges and achieve success at scale, Imagine Learning partnered with Isovalent to leverage its expertise in Cilium based platform. If the platform is unavailable, students can’t learn—impacting their progress and future opportunities. This case study is based on our customer conversation with Blake Romano at KubeCon Salt Lake City. Navigating Kubernetes complexity in education Operating Kubernetes in an education-focused environment presents unique and complex challenges, requiring a delicate balance between technical performance and mission-critical needs: Mission-Critical Reliability: Imagine Learning’s platform supports hundreds of thousands of students daily. Any downtime has immediate and profound consequences—disrupting lessons, frustrating teachers and students, and delaying academic progress. The team needed a way to ensure near-zero downtime to avoid negatively impacting their users. Data Privacy and Security: Student data is highly sensitive, governed by strict privacy regulations such as FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). Protecting this data is paramount, but securing Kubernetes environments at scale while maintaining compliance proved to be a significant hurdle. Failure to meet these requirements could result in severe consequences, including regulatory penalties, loss of trust from schools and families, and exposure of sensitive student information. Scalability: With a rapidly growing user base, Imagine Learning faced increasing demands on their platform’s infrastructure. Scaling their Kubernetes clusters efficiently and securely while managing rising levels of traffic was essential to keep up with organizational goals and user expectations. Without a scalable solution, the platform risked performance bottlenecks, slow response times, and an inability to accommodate future growth—potentially impacting the learning experiences of thousands of students. Visibility into Network Behavior: Early in their Kubernetes journey, the team struggled with understanding and resolving network issues. Packet drops, failed connections, and undiagnosed disruptions often led to inconsistent performance and difficulty troubleshooting problems. Developer Productivity: Without guardrails in place, developers encountered challenges deploying and managing workloads on Kubernetes. The lack of an intuitive, secure, and stable environment limited their ability to innovate and deliver new features rapidly. Addressing these challenges required a transformative approach—one that shifted Imagine Learning from limited visibility, security gaps, and operational inefficiencies to a robust, scalable, and secure Kubernetes platform. This transformation was achieved by combining cutting-edge technology with expert guidance from Isovalent. Why Isovalent Platform for Kubernetes networking? Imagine Learning chose Isovalent to future-proof their Kubernetes platform while addressing the demands of a rapidly growing user base. With advanced networking, security, and observability tools, Isovalent provided a pathway to operational excellence. Resilient and Reliable Infrastructure: With Isovalent’s Platform based on Cilium and Tetragon, Imagine Learning achieved a highly available system capable of supporting mission-critical workloads without interruptions. Streamlined Compliance: The platform’s robust Zero Trust security framework ensured adherence to privacy regulations such as FERPA, reducing the burden of audits and compliance reporting. Scalable Operations Across Environments: Isovalent’s multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud networking capabilities allowed Imagine Learning to expand their platform seamlessly, adapting to growth without added complexity. Data-Driven Decisions: Enhanced visibility into application and network behavior provided actionable insights, enabling Imagine Learning to optimize performance and improve user experiences. This partnership demonstrated that modern Kubernetes platforms could not only handle technical demands but also deliver meaningful business outcomes such as reduced costs, faster scalability, and improved service quality. Transforming challenges into opportunities with Isovalent Through its partnership with Isovalent, Imagine Learning successfully tackled their key challenges and achieved their desired outcomes: Enhanced Observability: Leveraging eBPF’s kernel-level data collection, Imagine Learning gained deep insights into network and application behavior. This enabled the team to quickly identify and resolve issues like packet drops and connection failures, significantly reducing downtime and ensuring a seamless user experience. Strengthened Security: By implementing Zero Trust principles with Cilium, Imagine Learning established fine-grained network policies and identity-based controls. This safeguarded sensitive student data, maintained compliance with FERPA, and mitigated risks of breaches or penalties. Scalable Operations: With Isovalent’s multi-cloud capabilities, Imagine Learning seamlessly connected and scaled Kubernetes clusters across environments. This ensured the platform could handle increasing traffic demands without performance bottlenecks or operational complexity. Operational Stability for Developers: By creating a predictable and secure Kubernetes environment, Isovalent reduced unexpected infrastructure disruptions. This enabled developers to spend less time troubleshooting and more time delivering impactful features and innovations. Mission-Critical Reliability: Isovalent’s robust platform ensured high availability, drastically reducing the risk of downtime. This guaranteed uninterrupted access to educational tools, helping Imagine Learning meet the expectations of thousands of students and educators daily. Isovalent’s expertise and the capabilities of Cilium have been instrumental in helping us build a scalable, secure, and reliable platform. We now have the confidence to meet the demands of our growing user base while delivering a seamless learning experience. - Blake Romano, Senior Software Engineer at Imagine Learning This tailored approach by Isovalent not only addressed Imagine Learning’s immediate challenges but also established a solid foundation for future success. The impact The collaboration with Isovalent delivered measurable improvements across Imagine Learning’s platform: Increased Reliability: Downtime was significantly reduced, ensuring uninterrupted access to learning tools for students and teachers alike. This improved overall user satisfaction and confidence in the platform. Proactive Issue Resolution: Enhanced observability empowered the team to identify and address network problems early, preventing potential disruptions and optimizing system performance. Strengthened Security Posture: Zero Trust architecture ensured sensitive student data remained protected while simplifying compliance with stringent privacy regulations. This reduced operational risk and audit complexity. Improved Developer Confidence: Developers could deploy workloads with increased efficiency and safety, enabling faster innovation cycles and delivering new features to educators and students more quickly. With Isovalent, we’ve built a platform that not only meets today’s needs but is ready to scale and evolve for the future. The level of visibility and security we now have has truly transformed our operations. - Blake Romano, Senior Software Engineer at Imagine Learning Conclusion Imagine Learning’s success story demonstrates the value of collaboration with Isovalent. By addressing security, reliability, and observability challenges, Imagine Learning has transformed its Kubernetes operations to support its mission of empowering students and educators. When it comes to building scalable, secure, and highly available Kubernetes platforms, Isovalent provides the expertise and tools necessary to ensure mission-critical success. If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of Kubernetes for your organization, explore how Isovalent and Cilium can help you achieve your goals.