How Telly Masters Rapid Software Delivery to Power the Next Generation of Consumer Electronics

Build vs. Buy Decision

One of Telly's earliest strategic decisions was whether to build their firmware management system in-house or partner with a specialized platform. According to Eric: "It's hard to sell to finance or your CEO why you need to invest engineering and resourcing into a reliable system to deploy. Firmware update infrastructure is more or less a separate product line that needs maintaining."

While a basic AWS IoT implementation might have seemed sufficient initially, Telly recognized that production-ready features at scale would require substantial ongoing investment. Eric's prior experience at Vizio, where similar systems occupied many engineers—particularly for a software app store—convinced him a better approach was needed.

Managing High-Volume Software Development

With dozens of software engineers working on multiple release trains across 20+ unique applications, Telly required a sophisticated system that could:

• Enable high-velocity development and testing workflows
• Safely deploy updates to customer devices on a regular cadence
• Track update success rates across their growing device fleet
• Optimize bandwidth usage with targeted component updates

Peridio's platform provided the comprehensive solution they needed, allowing their engineering and test teams to ship updates internally multiple times daily while maintaining a cadence of monthly updates to their production fleet.

Cohort-Based Release Management

Telly has implemented a sophisticated five-tier cohort system that enables controlled rollouts and comprehensive testing:

• Nightly Debug Cohort: Daily builds for engineering testing
• Nightly User Cohort: Production-like testing without debug features
• Release User Debug Cohort: Release candidate validation
• Public Beta Release User Cohort: Early adopter feedback collection
• Partner Release Debug Cohort: Third-party vendor integration testing

This system allows Telly to create temporary release cohorts for specific feature testing or run parallel release trains, ensuring maximum development velocity without compromising stability.

Advanced Release Management

Telly leverages key aspects of the Peridio platform for their operations:

• Phased, Scheduled Releases: Controlled deployment to specific user segments
• Device Cohorts with Tag-Based Rollout: Precise targeting of updates
• Component-Based Updates: Optimized bandwidth usage and reduced package sizes
• Visualization and Analytics: Real-time insights into fleet performance
• Differential Updates: Managing 20+ unique applications across their TV ecosystem

As Eric explains: "When you scale out to 100,000, 200,000, 300,000+ devices, the need for differential updates and component updates becomes critical. The ability to update individual components rather than entire firmware—showing exactly what changed, why it changed, and what data transfer is happening—drives cost savings at scale."

Customer Support Integration

The integration capabilities of Peridio's platform have been particularly valuable in bridging Telly's engineering and customer support teams. According to Eric: "For a hardware/software product like ours, you absolutely need your support team and your engineering team working hand-in-hand. I've seen this problem before—when those teams don't communicate effectively, it's a disaster."

Peridio's APIs and webhooks enable Telly to provide their support team with direct access to device information and update status, creating a seamless connection between what customers experience and what engineers are working on.