Success stories — a large Ukrainian department store rents virtual resources on Colobridge platform to ensure business continuity and rapid disaster recovery
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Country
Ukraine
Ukraine
Business
Department store
Department store
Product
Selling clothes, shoes and accessories
Selling clothes, shoes and accessories
Colobridge products and services used:
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Background
A prominent Ukrainian department store offers a wide range of leading Ukrainian and international brands. Several years ago, the department store embarked on a global revamp and later began digitalising its core services, including the launch of an official online store. Since then, the IT infrastructure support team’s primary efforts have been to ensure the requisite performance speed, availability of online services and the ability to implement new ideas to improve the customer experience quickly.
Problem
The stability of online store operations affects the quality of customer service in a department store. Along with local placement of IT infrastructure, the company used the services offered by a Ukrainian provider. After several months of cooperation, it was clear that the quality of services did not meet the client’s needs:
the previous provider used outdated IT infrastructure that limited the scalability and upgradability of software products;
there were periodic disruptions in online store operations. However, the provider did not seek to address availability issues quickly and efficiently.
The stability of online store operations affects the quality of customer service in a department store. Along with local placement of IT infrastructure, the company used the services offered by a Ukrainian provider. After several months of cooperation, it was clear that the quality of services did not meet the client’s needs:
the previous provider used outdated IT infrastructure that limited the scalability and upgradability of software products;
there were periodic disruptions in online store operations. However, the provider did not seek to address availability issues quickly and efficiently.
From the very beginning, we understood how important it was to replicate data, and for this purpose, we used BaaS – Backup as a Service. Since in order to automatically create, place and restore backups, we needed to use specialised software (in our case, VMware), it was essential for it to run smoothly and securely. Unfortunately, we had limited opportunities to update this software product to the most current version, specifically because of outdated IT infrastructure on the part of the previous provider. Moreover, the fact that our services were occasionally unavailable reduced the level of satisfaction of customers who bought our goods online.
Customer support specialist
Tasks
The client’s desire to receive high-quality IT services prompted them to seek an alternative provider. The client had the following objectives:
ensure that the company is supported by a reliable and reputable technology partner with a high level of IT expertise;
to place a part of IT infrastructure on a reliable venue outside of Ukraine, with a wide range of products within a single platform;
access to a reliable, fast and efficient platform with Enterprise-level hardware. The hardware must be regularly updated and must not limit the client’s ability to scale its IT infrastructure and update software for business services to operate;
use a high-quality service that provides prompt responses to requests and incident resolution. The helpdesk must have the required competencies and willingness to resolve customer issues as quickly as possible to avoid downtime of critical business processes;
optimise IT infrastructure deployment and maintenance costs.
The client was trying out different solutions to effectively protect information and was looking for an opportunity to get several different products on a platform from a single provider. In particular, while only BaaS was deployed after the online store was launched, a disaster recovery service (DRaaS) was later introduced to boost fault tolerance.
Implementation
A tender was held to find a new service provider, and Colobridge was selected. Colobridge offered a solution that matched the client’s budget and provided a reliable site for data placement, namely in two certified Tier III/Tier III+ fault-tolerant data centres in Germany, among the top 3 in the EU. The service provider guarantees that the client will receive high-quality services as per the SLA and provides financial guarantees to ensure their implementation. The support response time to a request is less than 15 minutes, and technical support staff is available 24/7/365, with no days off or holidays.
We met several times with Colobridge experts to discuss technical issues, choose the best products and data protection tools to solve our tasks and develop a strategy for migrating the online store to the Colobridge platform. Thanks to the provider’s support being available around the clock, we were able to migrate data to the dedicated servers rented from the provider at a convenient time when there were minimal user interactions (at night after 00:00).
Customer support specialist
Currently, the department store’s online store operates on dedicated servers located in one of Colobridge’s German data centres. To protect the client’s infrastructure, instead of BaaS, an advanced DRaaS solution (“Disaster Recovery as a Service”) is used. It has made it possible to significantly reduce the time it takes to recover IT infrastructure and get guaranteed resources for deploying internal customer services. Furthermore, DRaaS, with its much more advanced functionality and faster rollout from backups, costs as much as just BaaS offered by the previous provider.
The first stage involved setting up the network part, migrating the test virtual machine, checking network availability and testing the ability to switch back to the main site. The second stage involved replicating the main virtual machines. After setting up replication, the client carried out stress testing to ensure the solution was properly configured and that all the necessary services could be successfully restored at the remote site.
Currently, 17 high-performance virtual machines in the VMware cloud are dedicated to running the client’s tasks, with a total of more than 50 virtual processors and 120 GB of RAM. The Hyper-V cloud contains a router to run a VPN tunnel. The FWaaS solution (“Firewall as a Service”), also provided on Colobridge platform, is used to restrict access, protect the online store, and prevent hacker attacks and bot invasions.
Results
Currently, the official website of the department store is placed outside Ukraine on Colobridge’s dedicated servers which are physically located in Germany. On the one hand, this provides reliable, stable and accessible services the client initially sought. On the other hand, the client gained an added opportunity to protect business-critical data in wartime: having migrated the data to Germany back in 2019, the client did not have to look for a safe site after the outbreak of active hostilities.
By migrating to the cloud, the department store has gained access to modern hardware and Enterprise-level software solutions that provide complete freedom of action regarding software upgrades and IT infrastructure scaling. Technical support specialists are available 24/7/365, but in fact, they are rarely needed owing to smooth operations. Using disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) has helped to solve the problem of data security on a global scale. In case of force majeure, client services will be promptly deployed on a backup site on the service provider’s side within 15 minutes, which used to take several hours to several days.
By migrating to the cloud, the department store has gained access to modern hardware and Enterprise-level software solutions that provide complete freedom of action regarding software upgrades and IT infrastructure scaling. Technical support specialists are available 24/7/365, but in fact, they are rarely needed owing to smooth operations. Using disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) has helped to solve the problem of data security on a global scale. In case of force majeure, client services will be promptly deployed on a backup site on the service provider’s side within 15 minutes, which used to take several hours to several days.
After several years of cooperation, the disaster recovery solutions offered by Colobridge are significantly better than those offered by previous providers in terms of cost and recovery speed. We got our first positive impressions from the practical usage of the new platform while testing DRaaS, which only took 15 minutes from the test disruption to the full deployment of services. These results surpassed all our expectations.
We have not experienced any major issues with our services since 2019, and even if minor incidents occurred, our support team was able to resolve them promptly at any time. For example, on the night of 24 January 2021, after a problematic update, the website was unavailable, but the online store was back up and running in less than two hours. For my part, I highlight both the high-quality services and the responsible approach shown by Colobridge staff.
We have not experienced any major issues with our services since 2019, and even if minor incidents occurred, our support team was able to resolve them promptly at any time. For example, on the night of 24 January 2021, after a problematic update, the website was unavailable, but the online store was back up and running in less than two hours. For my part, I highlight both the high-quality services and the responsible approach shown by Colobridge staff.
Customer support specialist
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