Supply Chain Management and Logistics Leader Migrates Legacy to Kuberentes

Client Brief

Our client is a European leader in supply chain management and logistics. Boasting over 40,000 dedicated professionals, they specialize in the advanced integration of automation technology and software solutions, focusing on optimizing supply chain operations.

Committed to high-quality, innovative solutions, the company embraces open-source technologies, modern infrastructure standards, and a cloud-native stack. This forward-thinking approach positions them at the forefront of the ever-changing IT landscape, enabling them to set industry benchmarks and maintain a competitive edge.

Their dedication to service excellence reflects a deep understanding of customer needs and evolving market demands. With a large, skilled workforce, our client is a trendsetter in the industry, poised to adapt and excel amidst future challenges and opportunities.

Business Challenge

The client faced a significant challenge with their existing infrastructure. Their core service operated on a legacy system comprising over 600 large Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), leading to several issues:

• Scalability Issues: The VMs struggled to scale efficiently, incurring high costs.
• Maintenance Hurdles: Maintaining security and compliance on these VMs demanded substantial resources from the engineering team.
• Customer Onboarding Difficulties: The legacy system hindered efficient customer onboarding, affecting business growth and customer satisfaction.

The client's architecture team, tasked with designing their cloud infrastructure and creating core Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions, needed additional support. Consequently, they enlisted our assistance to expedite the creation of new modules.

Our Approach

Transition to Kubernetes: We suggested a modernization strategy centered around Kubernetes, involving:

• Migrating to a Containerized Environment: We transitioned their core services from VMs to containerized applications on Kubernetes, enhancing scalability, reliability, and deployment speed while reducing costs.
• Implementing GitOps and CI/CD: We established a GitOps workflow and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, enabling automated, reliable, and faster software releases.

In addition, we supported their architecture team by developing Terraform solutions, allowing the engineering and product teams to efficiently manage infrastructure. This IaC approach ensured consistency, minimized manual errors, and accelerated deployment. Tailoring our Terraform solutions to the client's specific needs was a primary challenge.

The Business Outcome

The key deliverables summary:

• Cost Reduction and Efficiency: The transition to Kubernetes resulted in an impressive 90% saving in infrastructure and operational costs, marking a significant financial and operational improvement.
• Optimized Resource Management and Scalability: The implementation of GitOps and CI/CD solutions offered the client enhanced control over their deployed resources. This made it easier to scale resources in response to high demand and provided a clearer overview of the entire deployment landscape.
• Enhanced Deployment Processes: The adoption of GitOps and CI/CD practices led to more efficient, error-free, and rapid deployment cycles, thereby accelerating the product development lifecycle and improving the overall quality of service delivery.
• Improved Scalability and Flexibility: The shift to Kubernetes significantly improved the client's ability to scale their services efficiently. This agility enabled them to meet varying customer demands promptly.
• Streamlined Maintenance and Security: The new containerized environment simplified maintenance tasks. With fewer large VMs to manage and enhanced security protocols, the client experienced a notable reduction in operational complexities.
• Accelerated Customer Onboarding: The modernized system streamlined the customer onboarding process, leading to increased customer satisfaction and faster service delivery.
• Significant Savings in Engineering Time and Resources: Modularized Terraform solutions freed up time that development teams were spending on managing their infrastructure. This resulted in a boost in performance and productivity across the teams.

Services used

• DevOps & Infrastructure services
• Cloud consultation