When a global financial institution with 30,000+ developers and 4,000+ projects needed to prepare for explosive growth, its Internal Developer Platform (IDP) faced a breaking point. Already one of the world’s largest Google Cloud implementations, the platform had powered innovation for years — but usage was projected to grow 5–10x. What was once massive needed to become colossal.
The startup needed to deliver a trading app that could:
The institution’s first-generation IDP (v1), launched in 2017, had been a success story in itself. It streamlined development, supported thousands of projects, and proved that large-scale platform engineering could be done within the strict demands of the financial industry.
But as the platform team planned for its next wave of growth, without significant investment in people, we needed to find a way to hyperscale.
The challenge was not just about straight-up growth.
The platform also had to:
Automate repetitive tasks to boost productivity.
Meet strict regulatory requirements.
Build v2 without simply adding headcount.
Standardise processes across thousands of projects.
Stay ahead with new technologies and business needs.
Ensure long-term sustainability and innovation.
In short, the institution needed to transform its IDP from a powerful enabler into a strategic foundation for future growth.
Our answer was Athena — a custom, enterprise-ready evolution of Mesoform Athena. This was not an incremental upgrade. It was a re-architecture of the IDP, designed from the ground up to support unprecedented scale while improving developer experience, strengthening security, and reducing operational overhead.
Key Innovations:
Developers gained autonomy to provision and manage their own environments without waiting on central teams, dramatically improving productivity.
Developers gained autonomy to provision and manage their own environments without waiting on central teams, dramatically improving productivity.
Together, these innovations created an IDP that was not only larger, but smarter, safer, and easier to use.
The reimagined platform, Colossus, has already begun to deliver measurable results:
Capable of supporting 10,000+ projects and tens of thousands more developers without performance degradation.
Capable of supporting 10,000+ projects and tens of thousands more developers without performance degradation.
Automated pipelines, self-service, and GitOps-driven workflows accelerated software delivery and reduced lead times.
Automated pipelines, self-service, and GitOps-driven workflows accelerated software delivery and reduced lead times.
Policy-driven governance, least-privilege models, and proactive enforcement strengthened compliance across all teams.
Policy-driven governance, least-privilege models, and proactive enforcement strengthened compliance across all teams.
Engineers spend less time on manual tasks and more time building innovative solutions.
Engineers spend less time on manual tasks and more time building innovative solutions.
Standardised patterns reduced fragmentation, ensuring every new service or operator followed the same high-quality path.
Standardised patterns reduced fragmentation, ensuring every new service or operator followed the same high-quality path.
Athena’s architecture allows the institution to adapt quickly to new technologies, regulations, and business needs.
Athena’s architecture allows the institution to adapt quickly to new technologies, regulations, and business needs.
This project was never just about scaling infrastructure. It was about future-proofing an entire organisation’s ability to innovate. By reimagining its IDP, this global financial institution now has a platform that can grow in lockstep with its ambitions — resilient, compliant, and built to last.
Athena transformed what was once a first-generation success story into a strategic enabler for growth, innovation, and long-term resilience. In one of the most highly regulated and demanding industries in the world, Colossus set a new standard for what an Internal Developer Platform can achieve.
Talk to Mesoform about designing your next secure, scalable platform