Scaling for success: this is how LemonSwan leveraged DevOps-as-a-Service to drive growth.
2025-12-02
For over 18 years, ticketmatic has been powering ticketing for the cultural sector in Belgium and the Netherlands. From the AB in Brussels and De Roma in Antwerp to Carré in Amsterdam and Studio 100’s musical productions, ticketmatic helps cultural houses, concert venues and theatres sell tickets, manage their audiences and strengthen their own brand.
Behind every show, premiere or concert lies one constant challenge: keeping a reliable, scalable platform running, one that evolves as fast as the cultural world itself.
Ticketmatic’s SaaS platform was originally built and managed entirely in-house. “Our developers handled everything themselves,” explains Bart De Man, CTO at ticketmatic. “We didn’t have a separate operations or DevOps team. The developers both built and maintained the infrastructure.”
That setup worked for years, but as the platform and team evolved, key people left, taking essential operational knowledge with them. “Everything kept running fine,” Bart continues, “but there was always that underlying worry: what if something serious happens? We realised we needed a more stable setup, a team that knew every technical detail inside out.”
Although ticketmatic had already moved from physical servers to AWS and started using Kubernetes by themselves. The team wanted to unlock the full potential of their cloud environment. “Kubernetes is a beast,” says Bart, “powerful, but with a steep learning curve. We knew enough to get by, but not enough to get the most out of it.”
Bart already knew Frederik from Skyscrapers, and their paths had crossed before. “When I revisited their website earlier this year, it was clear how much they had matured. Their approach had evolved into a full-fledged DevOps-as-a-Service model. Exactly what we were looking for.”
As ticketmatic prepared to expand its platform, the timing was right to re-evaluate whether to keep everything in-house or partner up. “We asked ourselves: do we want to keep doing this all on our own, or work with a team that does this every single day? The answer was obvious.”
Skyscrapers introduced ticketmatic to its Reference Developer Platform for SaaS: a mature, standardised environment running on AWS. The collaboration focused on both stability and scalability, replacing ad-hoc configurations with reusable, well-documented components.
In practice, this meant:
The ticketmatic environment was gradually aligned with Skyscrapers’ platform standards. “We went quite far in adapting our setup to their way of working,” says Bart. “Now we’re using standard components that fit perfectly into their workflow. It means we can rely on Skyscrapers’ expertise and get quick, effective answers whenever needed, all in a very efficient and affordable way.”
The result: deployments and scaling are now consistent, predictable and above all, worry-free. “Our developers can focus on building new features instead of firefighting infrastructure issues.”
Bart De Man, CTO ticketmatic
From the start, the project demanded careful timing. With ticketmatic’s busiest season approaching, both teams chose to postpone the go-live to a safer moment. This flexibility ensured a smooth transition and gave everyone confidence moving forward.
There was also another kind of go/no-go moment built into the collaboration itself. Ticketmatic had the freedom to stop the project at any time if things didn’t go as expected. “That option was always there,” Bart says, “but it was never on the table. The trust was there from the start, and it only grew stronger along the way.”
It’s still early days, but the benefits are already clear. “The system runs smoothly, performance is strong and issues are handled fast,” says Bart. “Most importantly, the platform is now fully understood by multiple people, not just one or two. That peace of mind is invaluable.”
Custom scripts and legacy deployments have been replaced with standardised components. “It’s a more future-proof setup. We no longer have to reinvent the wheel for every update.”
As the onboarding continues and the ticketmatic team scales up, Bart expects the relationship to deepen even further. “The more we collaborate, the more natural it becomes to involve Skyscrapers in our daily operations. They really are an extension of our development team.”
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