Solution 05 of 06 · MLOps · The backbone

The infrastructure that keeps models alive.

MLOps and data engineering - the unglamorous foundation underneath every AiSPRY engagement. Feature stores, model registries, training orchestration, real-time inference APIs, drift monitoring, and the data platform underneath. Foundation work in every production deployment - no model survives long without it.

See MLOps case studies
40+
Production deployments
on this stack
99.9%
Inference uptime
SLA standard
5-8
Backbone services
per deployment
MLOps & Data Engineering

What this is

MLOps as system architecture, not Kubernetes cosplay.

Most AI projects that fail in production don't fail on the model - they fail on the data pipeline, the feature drift, the missing monitoring, the impossible retraining loop. AiSPRY's MLOps practice has been building durable production AI infrastructure since 2018 - opinionated, boring, and observable.

01

Data foundation first

Forty deployments have taught us this: most ML projects that fail, fail on data plumbing. We invest 4-6 weeks of every engagement in the data foundation - source-system inventory, ETL design, feature engineering, governance - before any model work.

02

Feature stores when they earn their keep

We don't deploy Feast on day one of every project. We deploy it when feature reuse, training-serving skew, or low-latency inference makes the complexity worth it. Many production systems run on simpler infrastructure.

03

Observability is the deployment, not an add-on

Drift detection, residual monitoring, prediction logging, and alerting all ship with the model - not in a follow-on phase. If we can't see what the model is doing in production, we can't keep it alive.

04

Cloud-portable by default

AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-prem all sit behind the same abstractions: Airflow, MLflow, Feast, FastAPI, dbt. Migration between clouds is a config change, not a rewrite. We've done it for clients with shifting infrastructure strategies.

How we do it

Six MLOps capabilities.

These six pillars are the backbone underneath every production deployment. Most engagements use four to six; the GMR data spine and HIES Oman use all six.

Capability 01

Training Pipelines

Orchestrated, reproducible training runs with versioned data, code, and hyperparameters. Every artefact is traceable; every run is reproducible from a single command.

AirflowPrefectDagsterMLflow
Capability 02

Model Registry & CI/CD

Versioned model registry with staging-to-production promotion gates, automated evaluation, and rollback capability. Models ship through CI/CD, not via Slack messages.

MLflowDVCGitHub ActionsArgoCD
Capability 03

Feature Stores

Online and offline feature stores for production ML - single source of truth for features, with point-in-time correctness for training and low-latency lookup for inference.

FeastTectonHopsworks (selectively)
Capability 04

Real-Time Inference

Production inference APIs with autoscaling, batch + streaming support, request validation, and response logging. Triton for high-throughput GPU inference where it matters.

FastAPITritonBentoMLKafkaRedis
Capability 05

Observability & Drift

Prediction logging, residual monitoring, data drift detection (PSI, KS-stat), and concept drift alarms. Every production model has its own dashboard and alert routing.

PrometheusGrafanaEvidentlyWhyLabs
Capability 06

Data Platform

The data layer underneath everything: ingestion, modelling, governance, and access control. dbt for transformations, Kafka for streaming, Spark for batch.

KafkaSparkdbtAirbyteIceberg

Use cases

Where MLOps moves the needle.

MLOps doesn't have flashy use cases - it has projects that didn't fail. The patterns below are the ones that recur across our forty deployments.

ENERGY

High-frequency trading-grade inference

Sub-second forecast inference for 96-block electricity markets, with auto-retrain pipelines, drift monitoring, and rollback gates. The MLOps spine underneath GMR Power Trading.

GMR Power Trading1 flagship platform
GOVERNMENT

National-scale data platform

End-to-end data engineering platform for national statistics - household expenditure, prices, macroeconomic indicators - with governance, lineage, and forecast pipelines.

NCSI Oman HIES1 production platform
INDUSTRIAL

Edge-to-cloud inference pipelines

Models train in cloud GPUs, ship to Jetson edge devices, telemetry flows back through Kafka for retraining. The pipeline underneath Drishti and WDD.

Drishti · WDDUsed in 8+ projects
CROSS-SECTOR

Feature store rollouts

Feast feature stores deployed where feature reuse, training-serving skew, or low-latency lookup justify the complexity. Selective adoption - not everywhere.

Multiple sectors5+ deployments
CROSS-SECTOR

Model registry & CI/CD setup

MLflow registry with staging-to-production promotion gates, automated evaluation, and rollback. The default starting point for clients with multiple models in production.

All clientsDefault infrastructure
CROSS-SECTOR

Drift monitoring & alerting

Production drift detection on every model - data drift, prediction drift, concept drift - with alert routing into existing on-call rotations.

All clientsDefault infrastructure

Tech stack

The moving parts.

Orchestration & Tracking
  • AirflowWorkflow orchestration default
  • MLflowExperiment tracking & registry
  • Prefect & DagsterModern alternatives, used selectively
  • DVCData & model versioning
  • GitHub ActionsCI/CD for model releases
Serving & Storage
  • FastAPIDefault inference API framework
  • Triton Inference ServerHigh-throughput GPU serving
  • BentoMLModel packaging & deployment
  • FeastFeature store, when it earns its keep
  • Redis & PostgreSQLOnline feature lookup & metadata
Data & Observability
  • KafkaStreaming data backbone
  • Spark & dbtBatch processing & transformation
  • Iceberg / Delta LakeOpen table formats
  • Evidently & WhyLabsDrift detection
  • Prometheus & GrafanaMetrics & dashboards

Frequently asked

Common questions about this capability.

Quick answers to what teams ask before bringing us in. Don't see your question? Talk to us directly.

No. Feature stores like Feast solve specific problems: feature reuse across models, training-serving skew, low-latency online lookup. If you don't have those problems yet, you don't need the complexity. Many of our production systems run on simpler infrastructure - a versioned data warehouse, a clean dbt layer, and FastAPI for serving. We deploy Feast when it earns its keep.

We design cloud-portable by default. The backbone - Airflow, MLflow, Feast, FastAPI, dbt - runs anywhere. Cloud-specific services (SageMaker, Vertex AI, Azure ML) get used selectively when they bring meaningful value, with the migration cost weighed up explicitly. Several clients have moved between clouds during our engagement; the portability is real.

The same backbone, deployed on Kubernetes or directly on VMs. We've done significant on-prem and air-gapped deployments - government, defense-adjacent, healthcare clients with non-negotiable data residency. The pattern is the same: Airflow, MLflow, FastAPI, Postgres. The hard part isn't the deployment - it's the operations handover.

Five things. (1) System metrics - latency, throughput, error rates. (2) Data quality - schema validation, null rates, distribution checks at ingestion. (3) Feature drift - PSI and KS-stat on training-vs-production feature distributions. (4) Prediction drift - distribution of predictions over time. (5) Concept drift - model performance vs. ground truth where it's available. Alerts route into existing on-call rotations.

Depends on starting state. Greenfield deployment of the full backbone - registry, pipelines, serving, monitoring - is typically 8-12 weeks. Slotting MLOps onto an existing system is usually 4-8 weeks for the core layers, then ongoing iteration. We don't sell long phase-2 engagements just to keep meters running; the goal is to hand off a maintainable system.

Both options. Some clients want full handover at the end of the engagement - we document, train, and walk away. Others retain us on a quarterly basis for upgrades, drift response, and platform evolution. We don't push managed-service contracts as a default; the choice is yours.

Got models in production? Let's talk infrastructure.

30-minute discussion with our MLOps architects. Bring your current setup - registry, pipelines, monitoring - and we'll point at the gaps that matter.

See related case studiesNo sales pitch. Architects, not BDRs.