How Seznam’s Hundreds of Developers Build Trust and Scale Innovation with GitLab & Cloudfresh

Challenge: Balancing Developer Velocity with Absolute Data Sovereignty

For Seznam, stability and trust are critical: their infrastructure must scale reliably, keep data secure, and give developers the tools they need to move fast.

Seznam’s developers set out to find a solution that could bring structure to their workflows without sacrificing data control. The requirement was clear: data had to stay in-house. At the time, cloud-hosted DevOps tools were not an option. The company needed a platform that would:

GitLab quickly emerged as the clear choice—one of the few self-managed solutions powerful enough to combine scalability, automation, and security in a single platform.

Solution: GitLab as the Backbone of Development

Adopted gradually, team by team, GitLab evolved from a small internal experiment into Seznam’s central DevSecOps platform. It became the single place where developers plan, code, test, and deploy. At the same time, it ensures that every piece of data stays securely on-premises.

Each of Seznam’s 50+ development teams uses GitLab in ways that best fit their workflows, reflecting the company’s culture of flexibility and trust.

Key ways Seznam uses GitLab today:

1. Code collaboration

Merge requests and reviews drive quality assurance and knowledge sharing across every project. Teams rely on GitLab to standardize collaboration while maintaining full autonomy.

2. CI/CD automation at scale

With more than 100,000 pipelines running each month, GitLab automates everything from software builds and testing to infrastructure provisioning and GitOps workflows—ensuring faster delivery and fewer manual steps.

3. Project management in context

Using issue weights, epics, and roadmaps, developers can plan and track progress directly within GitLab, reducing tool-switching and keeping projects aligned from idea to release.

4. Beyond code

GitLab Pages, integrated wikis, and APIs extend the platform into documentation, publishing, and automation. Teams even connect GitLab with internal systems for custom workflows and service management.

5. Infrastructure management

From Kafka and Hadoop to OpenStack and monitoring services, Seznam’s engineers leverage GitLab pipelines to automate infrastructure tasks, manage configurations, and scale internal platforms efficiently.

A practical example:

GitLab has become the interface for managing and configuring hundreds of remote servers across Seznam’s infrastructure. Through GitOps-driven automation, teams can request, provision, and update internal services directly from pipelines. This approach has also automated the provisioning of monitoring infrastructure company-wide—a change that significantly improved speed, consistency, and reliability while reducing manual maintenance.

Results: Trust, Stability, and Efficiency

Through bottom-up adoption, GitLab has grown into the backbone of Seznam’s development ecosystem, combining collaboration, automation, and trust in a single, scalable, self-managed platform.

At a glance:

With GitLab at the core, Seznam achieved more than just code storage:

1. Platform reliability that teams trust

GitLab has consistently proven stable and maintainable, even as Seznam’s usage has expanded. Despite running a large self-managed instance, the platform shows exceptional uptime with no major operational disruptions. Developers know that when they push code or trigger pipelines, GitLab simply works.

2. Smooth, predictable upgrades

Regular version updates are completed without significant complications, helping Seznam stay aligned with GitLab’s latest features and security patches. The consistency of these cycles has built internal confidence and allowed for minimal downtime.

3. Security and full data control

By hosting GitLab entirely on-premises, Seznam maintains complete sovereignty over its data—a non-negotiable requirement given the company’s strict security policies. Code, pipelines, and documentation never leave infrastructure, ensuring compliance and trust.

4. Collaboration that enhances code quality

Merge requests and peer reviews are universal across teams, embedding transparency into workflows. These features ensure consistent quality and foster knowledge sharing across hundreds of repositories.

5. Efficient scaling through documentation and planning

GitLab’s extensive administrator documentation—covering deployments from 1,000 to 50,000 users—has been crucial for capacity planning. It enables the team to scale confidently while optimizing infrastructure resources.

6. Simplified tool landscape and reduced overhead

While Seznam doesn’t track cost optimization formally, consolidating project management, CI/CD, documentation, and monitoring into GitLab reduced the need for standalone tools. This consolidation simplifies security management and lowers operational complexity.

Future Plans: AI-Driven Development with GitLab Duo & MCP

Looking ahead, Seznam aims to integrate GitLab into its specific AI ecosystem. The platform will be tightly integrated with internal AI development tools and will work as a data source and a testing ground for intelligent workflows.

• Integrating GitLab into Seznam’s AI architecture via MCP. Seznam is developing an internal Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to unify access to data across its technology stack. GitLab will act as a key data provider, supplying contextual information—from repositories and pipelines to project management and deployment histories—enabling AI tools to analyze and act on complete development lifecycle data.
  
• Creating safe sandboxes for AI experimentation.  To ensure security and maintain production stability, Seznam plans to deploy separate GitLab instances as sandbox environments. These will allow teams to test AI models, Gitlab Duo capabilities, and MCP integrations without affecting live systems—accelerating experimentation while keeping risk under control.

The long-term vision is clear: GitLab will evolve from a reliable code and automation platform into a core component of Seznam’s AI-enabled infrastructure—a system where development, data, and intelligence converge to help teams work faster, smarter, and with complete confidence in the tools they trust.

Cloudfresh’s Role: Guiding Growth and Innovation

Cloudfresh, a Certified (Select) GitLab partner, has been supporting the company in managing and scaling its self-hosted GitLab environment efficiently. The cooperation focuses on practical enablement, feature adoption, and long-term cost optimization.

Cloudfresh supports Seznam by:

With Cloudfresh as a strategic GitLab Professional Services Partner, Seznam continues to strengthen its stable, secure development platform—while building the foundation for future, AI-powered innovation.