Case Study: RISCO Group achieves on-demand dev/test provisioning from days to minutes with Puppet

Automating cloud deployments with Azure Resource Manager and Puppet

RISCO Group, an Israeli-based provider of security hardware and cloud/SaaS solutions, faced slow, manual provisioning of multi-tier dev/test cloud environments that could take days or even a week. The manual process—creating Azure services, configuring networks, and installing OS/security updates—created inconsistencies between QA and production and slowed R&D, so the company wanted a one-click, on-demand approach that would also enable future CI/CD adoption.

The team built a proof-of-concept self-service portal (ASP.NET on Azure App Service) that authenticates with Azure AD, launches ARM templates from blob storage via the Azure .NET SDK, and deploys VMs preconfigured with Puppet agents using VM extensions. An on‑premises Puppet master (autosign for the POC) applied firewall, Chocolatey and app-installation policies, turning a week-long manual task into minutes—saving over 200 hours per month—and delivering infrastructure-as-code and a clear path toward CI/CD and further automation.

Risco Group

Ido Vapner

Head of DevSecOps & Technology