Case Study: Vanguard achieves 70% faster development and $2.4M annual savings with Kong

Vanguard saves $2.4M annually and cuts deployment time 70% with Kong

Vanguard, a major global investment advisor, faced significant operational complexity and a lack of standardization in its API gateway configurations. This led to fragmented tooling, lengthy manual processes, and deployment failures that hindered developer productivity. The challenge for Vanguard was to operate Kong consistently at an enterprise scale across hundreds of applications, moving beyond runtime performance to improve configuration quality and deployment speed.

To address this, Kong's decK was integrated into a custom-built Vanguard solution called Deck Launch, which automated governance and centralized configuration. This developer-first approach resulted in a 70% reduction in deployment time and standardized over 400 applications. By eliminating repetitive work, Vanguard saved approximately $2.4 million annually. The Kong-powered solution also transformed the company's culture, increasing developer satisfaction and turning security teams into advocates.

Vanguard