Gotik - Cloud Consulting Firm

Challenge:

• Complex supply chain management: Ensuring precise and flexible inventory management and ordering processes across member stores.

• Customer data optimization: The need to leverage data to gain better insights into customer behavior and make data-driven business decisions.

• App modernization: Modernizing legacy applications from ASP.NET MVC to improve performance and compatibility with cloud ecosystems.

• Scalability and high availability: Ensuring that the system can scale flexibly to meet growing demands while maintaining high availability and reliability.

Azure Solutions

1. Migration from ASP.NET MVC to .NET Core and Angular: RetailPro migrated its legacy applications from ASP.NET MVC to .NET Core combined with Angular to build a modern frontend and a powerful backend. This enhanced the application's performance and leveraged the security and features of .NET Core while integrating seamlessly with cloud environments.

2. Azure App Service and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for Scalability and High Availability: The modernized applications were deployed using Azure App Service and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to ensure scalability and high availability. Azure App Service provided a managed hosting solution for both .NET Core and Angular applications with auto-scaling capabilities to handle fluctuating traffic. AKS was used to manage and run containerized microservices, optimizing resource usage and minimizing downtime.

3. Azure Service Bus for Service Communication: Azure Service Bus enabled RetailPro to reliably manage communication between different services. This ensured smooth and secure communication between backend and frontend components, even under high traffic or network issues.

4. Azure Synapse Analytics for Data Management and Analysis: Using Azure Synapse Analytics, RetailPro could collect and analyze data from their retail systems and supply chain operations, allowing them to make real-time, data-driven business decisions.

Result:

• Enhanced performance and scalability: Migrating to .NET Core and Angular, combined with Azure App Service and AKS, improved application performance, reduced downtime, and ensured the system was always available, even during peak times.

• High flexibility: With the auto-scaling capabilities of Azure App Service and container management via AKS, RetailPro could easily scale its systems to meet growing demands without compromising performance.

• Improved customer experience: Azure Machine Learning models and Power BI reports helped RetailPro create personalized marketing strategies and improve the overall shopping experience for customers.

• Security and reliability: Multi-layered security solutions from Azure Security Center and Azure Active Directory ensured system integrity and protected customer data, providing a reliable and secure environment.

Conclusion:

RetailPro successfully modernized its systems using .NET Core, Angular, and various Azure services such as App Service, AKS, and Service Bus. By leveraging Azure's cloud solutions, they optimized performance, enhanced customer experience, and ensured the scalability, high availability, and security required for their business operations.

Challenge:

• Multi-channel management: RetailXPle needed to streamline order management and customer engagement across various online platforms like Tiki, Lazada, Shopee, and payment services such as MoMo, ZaloPay, and VNPay.

• Scalable architecture: The company required an architecture that could scale dynamically to handle peak loads during sales promotions while maintaining high availability and performance.

• Effective customer engagement: Providing personalized engagement and real-time notifications for offers, loyalty programs, and order updates was crucial for RetailXPle's growing user base.

• POS integration: RetailXPle needed to ensure that its Point of Sale (POS) systems, deployed across member stores, were seamlessly integrated with the cloud for real-time inventory and sales updates.

Azure-based Solution

1. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for Microservices Orchestration: RetailXPle adopted Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to host and manage its core services as microservices, ensuring high availability and scalability. Each critical function, such as Order Management, Customer Engagement, E-commerce, Notification Service, and Loyalty & Promotions, is deployed as a separate .NET Core microservice, allowing RetailXPle to scale individual components independently based on demand.

2. Azure App Service for Web Application Hosting: The frontend web application, which interacts with the microservices, is hosted on Azure App Service. This setup provides seamless integration with the backend and allows automatic scaling, ensuring that users can access the application without performance degradation during high-traffic periods.

3. Azure Application Gateway with Web Application Firewall (WAF): To ensure security and traffic management, RetailXPle leverages Azure Application Gateway with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect against threats and optimize load balancing. This also helps in managing requests from multiple channels, such as online shopping platforms and payment gateways, ensuring smooth and secure transactions.

Result:

• Scalability and performance: With AKS and Azure App Service, RetailXPle achieved dynamic scaling based on demand, ensuring seamless operation during peak sales events while reducing operational costs during off-peak times.

• Improved customer engagement: Real-time push notifications using Azure Notification Hub and event-driven architecture enhanced customer satisfaction, offering personalized and timely updates across multiple channels.

• High availability and reliability: By utilizing Azure Application Gateway with WAF and other cloud-native services, RetailXPle ensured consistent uptime and protected against security threats, meeting customer demands for a highly available and secure shopping experience.

• Streamlined multi-channel operations: Integration with multiple e-commerce and payment platforms via Azure Service Bus and Event Grid allowed RetailXPle to efficiently manage orders, payments, and customer engagement across diverse channels.

• Unified data management: Using Azure Storage and Database services, RetailXPle ensured that inventory and customer data were well-organized, securely stored, and easily accessible for analytics and decision-making.

Challenge:

• Device scalability: Managing and monitoring a large-scale deployment of 100,000 devices across multiple retail locations.

• Reliability and uptime: Ensuring consistent uptime and data flow, especially during peak shopping seasons or large-scale sales events.

• Real-time data analysis: The ability to process and analyze large volumes of real-time data from IoT devices to optimize operations, inventory management, and customer engagement.

• Security: Protecting the data and the IoT devices from potential security threats.

Azure-based IoT Solution

1. Azure IoT Central for Device Management: GS Retail leverages Azure IoT Central to centrally manage 100,000 IoT devices across all their retail shops. This fully managed service provides out-of-the-box scalability, allowing GS Retail to quickly onboard new devices without worrying about underlying infrastructure management. Azure IoT Central also simplifies monitoring, diagnostics, and security for all connected devices.

2. Azure IoT Hub for Secure and Reliable Communication: To facilitate secure and reliable communication between devices and cloud services, Azure IoT Hub is used. It provides bi-directional communication, allowing GS Retail to collect telemetry data from devices and send commands to them. IoT Hub ensures high throughput and low-latency data communication, crucial for the smooth operation of devices in retail environments.

3. .NET Core Microservices for Backend Processing: The backend system is built using .NET Core microservices that handle data ingestion, processing, and storage. These microservices are deployed on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for scalability, ensuring that the system can handle the increasing data load as more devices are added. Each microservice is designed to be independently scalable to manage specific tasks such as inventory management, device health monitoring, and customer engagement.

Result:

• Scalability for 100,000 devices: By leveraging Azure IoT Central and IoT Hub, GS Retail successfully scaled its IoT network to manage 100,000 devices without compromising on performance or security.

• High reliability and uptime: The combination of Azure IoT Hub, AKS, and microservices architecture ensured that the system maintained high uptime, even during peak sales periods, ensuring no disruption in operations.

• Real-time operational insights: Using Azure Data Explorer and Cosmos DB, GS Retail gained real-time insights into inventory levels, sales trends, and device health. This allowed them to optimize store operations and enhance customer satisfaction.

• Improved efficiency: Automated reordering and real-time notifications via Azure Functions and Event Grid streamlined inventory management, reducing manual intervention and ensuring stores were always stocked with popular items.

• Enhanced security: By integrating Azure Active Directory and IoT device authentication, GS Retail maintained a secure environment for its devices and data, safeguarding customer and operational information.

Challenge:

Business Drivers:

• Scalability Issues: The on-prem solution could not scale easily with increasing users and workloads.

• Operational Overhead: Managing individual instances for each client was time-consuming and expensive.

• User Experience: Modern users demanded a web-based solution that was accessible from anywhere and on any device.

• Cost Efficiency: Azure’s pay-as-you-go model provided cost benefits over maintaining expensive on-prem hardware.

Legacy Environment Overview

• Technology Stack: C# Windows Forms application with a SQL Server backend.

Challenges:

• Each client had a separate version of the application, leading to difficulties in updating and bug fixes.

• Manual scaling and server provisioning created bottlenecks during periods of high demand.

• On-prem infrastructure was costly to maintain and lacked disaster recovery capabilities.

Modernization Goals

• Multi-Tenancy: A single instance of the application should serve multiple clients while ensuring data isolation and tenant-specific customization.

• Elastic Scalability: Automatically scale up and down based on demand, reducing the operational burden and optimizing costs.

• Cloud-Native: Move to Microsoft Azure, leveraging platform-as-a-service (PaaS) components to reduce infrastructure management.

Enhanced Monitoring and Security: Implement continuous monitoring and integrate with Azure’s security features such as Key Vault for sensitive data management.

Challenges Faced

• Data Migration: One of the major challenges was migrating tenant-specific data from the on-prem SQL Server to the Azure SQL Database. This required a well-coordinated data migration strategy, ensuring minimal downtime for tenants.

• Legacy Integration: Some legacy services still needed to be integrated with the new system, requiring careful management to avoid disrupting ongoing operations.

• Solution Architecture Overview

  The new architecture is designed based on cloud-native principles, leveraging several Azure services for scalability, monitoring, and secure access, as shown in the provided architecture diagram.

Result:

• Reduction in Costs: The company observed a 30% reduction in infrastructure costs due to Azure’s pay-as-you-go model.

• Improved User Satisfaction: The web-based solution improved customer satisfaction with faster access, better performance, and a modern interface.

• Next Steps: Company X plans to further optimize the solution by integrating additional Azure services such as Azure Machine Learning for predictive analytics and Azure Functions for serverless computing needs.