Case Study: EAB achieves consistently green, dramatically faster CI pipelines (6 hr → 20 min) with GitLab Premium

Increasing development speed to keep students in school

EAB, a higher-education analytics firm working with 1,500+ schools, needed faster, more reliable builds for its Student Success Management System after losing tool licenses and inheriting a fragmented CI toolchain (Bamboo, Jenkins, Solano, Circle). Builds were single‑threaded and took six to eight hours, leaving pipelines frequently red and slowing developer velocity; EAB evaluated options and selected GitLab (GitLab Premium) to provide source control and CI with low maintenance overhead.

EAB implemented on‑premises GitLab CI with auto‑scaling under GitLab Premium, consolidating SCM/CI and simplifying the toolchain. The change cut build time from about six hours to ~20 minutes, produced consistently green pipelines, and reduced maintenance overhead; within six months EAB ran 18,000 builds (nearly 500,000 jobs) across 888 projects in 80 groups with 214 users. GitLab also improved collaboration and testing culture through merge controls and assigned approvers, increasing developer engagement and code quality.

EAB

Eliza Brock Marcum

CI Lead