Cloud tech? We pretty much live and breathe it now. But, truth be told, it's not always rainbows and smooth sailing. Let me tell you about our rollercoaster ride with a FinTech startup in Saudi Arabia (KSA). It's a tale of tackling challenges and making do with what we've got.

Initially, things looked... scattered. Our microservices were everywhere—some manually deployed, the main frontend chilling in Europe, and the backend on a local provider reselling Azure. Not to forget, our MongoDB cluster was enjoying its stay outside KSA. Talk about being all over the place!

So, what's a team to do? First stop: finding a cloud provider in KSA. Sahara Cloud was a no-go (too pricey, too basic). AWS and Azure? No presence in KSA. Then, like finding an oasis in the desert, GCP announced their new region right in Dammam. Perfect, right? Almost. Signing up was a maze, thanks to needing to go through a reseller. Plus, the new region was like a new restaurant opening—limited menu, and you can't always get what you want.

Despite the hiccups, we were determined. We leaned into Cloud Run for its simplicity and because we already had a foot in the door with one service. Our MongoDB? We had to roll up our sleeves and host it ourselves, considering the lack of managed options and our need to stay within regulations.

But here's where the magic happens. We revamped our whole development and deployment dance. Out with the old manual ways and in with a shiny new CI/CD pipeline that made rolling out features smoother than ever. We went from a juggling act to a well-oiled machine, with environments for every stage of development.

And let's not forget about keeping an eye on everything. With GCP's tools, we set up alerts that ping us on Telegram and Slack, turning us into guardians of our galaxy—or at least our servers.

This journey taught us a lot about creativity under constraints and the power of perseverance. Are you keen to dive deeper into this adventure? Check out the full story here.