Global Retail Company (GRC) is a multinational retail organization with a 30-year history of operations. GRC manages over 1,000 brick-and-mortar stores in 40 countries, a thriving e-commerce platform, and multiple product lines that cater to various customer segments.
Currently, GRC employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, with thousands of supplier and distributor partnerships to optimize the sourcing and distribution of their products. GRC blends modern technology with a traditional store experience, offering customers omnichannel retail options through mobile apps, websites, and physical locations.
GRC's on-premises IT infrastructure handles customer transactions, inventory management, e-commerce services, data analytics, and supply chain management. Over the years, GRC has heavily invested in proprietary software solutions and hardware tailored to its unique requirements. As the company's operations have grown, the pressure on its IT infrastructure has increased.
- Increasing online sales and customer traffic have led to performance issues on GRC's e-commerce platform with occasional downtime during peak hours.
- GRC's data center infrastructure is costly to maintain and scale, resulting in difficulty handling rapid business growth.
- Legacy applications are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and challenging to integrate with modern solutions.
- GRC faces challenges in quickly processing, analyzing, and gaining insights from vast amounts of customer and market data.
- GRC aims to improve its demand forecasting, personalized marketing, and customer support capabilities through the use of AI/ML technologies but lacks expertise and resources to implement these solutions effectively.
- GRC experiences long lead times for its application releases and updates, making it difficult to respond to changing customer needs and market dynamics quickly.
- Improve the reliability, scalability, and performance of GRC's e-commerce platform.
- Lower the overall cost of GRC's IT infrastructure and maintenance.
- Modernize legacy applications and systems to optimize efficiency.
- Leverage cloud services and tools to enable rapid data processing and analytics.
- Implement AI/ML workloads into GRC's operations to enhance demand forecasting, personalized marketing, and customer support.
- Integrate DevOps principles and practices to streamline software development, testing, and deployment processes.
Global Retail Company's current IT infrastructure is divided into several key components:
- E-commerce platform: The e-commerce platform is hosted on traditional servers and is mainly based on a monolithic architecture. This platform is facing challenges in scaling during peak usage periods.
- Inventory management: GRC uses a custom-built solution to manage the inventory across their stores as well as to handle orders from online customers. This system is built on a legacy database that is reaching its limit in terms of both scalability and expensive maintenance.
- Data analytics and reporting: Analytics data is extracted and processed by an in-house developed ETL solution from various data sources, including transaction data, customer data, and inventory data. The final data output is used to generate regular reports in PDF format.
- Supply chain management: To manage its vast network of suppliers and distributors, GRC uses a proprietary supply chain management (SCM) application. This application is built using a legacy software platform that has become difficult and costly to maintain.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): GRC's CRM system is built on top of a commercial software application, which has been heavily customized to accommodate GRC's needs. The system is hosted on-premises and lacks integration capabilities with modern tools.
- Customer transactions: The company processes approximately 10 million transactions on a daily basis, with transaction data consisting of customer details, product information, purchase dates, and payment methods.
- Clickstreams: GRC's online platforms generate about 1 terabyte of clickstream data per day, including visitor information, browsing history, search queries, and time spent on specific pages.
- Inventory data: GRC manages an inventory of approximately 200,000 unique SKUs with associated information, including product descriptions, images, supplier details, and stock levels. The inventory data is updated several times a day, as new stock arrives and sales are made.
- Current capabilities: GRC's data analytics team extracts, processes, and generates reports from the transaction data, customer data, and inventory data using their in-house developed ETL solution. The reports are generated in PDF format at regular intervals.
- Tools being used: GRC's analytics solution relies on a combination of scripting languages and relational databases for processing data. The team uses a legacy reporting tool for generating the reports.
GRC's software development is currently managed by multiple teams in various geographical locations. The teams are organized by project rather than function, with each responsible for specific applications.
The software development life cycle is based on the traditional Waterfall model, where planning, requirement gathering, design, implementation, testing, and deployment happen sequentially. GRC's teams work independently, and communication between teams is limited. This model results in long lead times for application releases and updates.
Although some development teams have experimented with Agile methodologies, GRC has not adopted a consistent company-wide Agile or DevOps practice. There is also a lack of automation in the development process, making it difficult to rapidly deploy and manage changes in the system.
Question 1: What specific technologies does GRC use for the e-commerce platform in their stack?
Answer: Our e-commerce platform primarily uses Microsoft technologies, including ASP.NET for web development, and SQL Server for the underlying database. We are also using a mix of JavaScript frameworks for our front-end development.
Question 2: How does GRC handle application deployment and hosting in the current infrastructure?
Answer: Currently, we host our applications on Windows Server virtual machines running on-premises data centers. For deployment, we are using a combination of manual processes and scripting based on PowerShell.
Question 3: Does GRC have experience with any cloud services or platforms?
Answer: A few of our teams have experimented with some cloud services, such as cloud-based DevOps and managed databases, for small-scale projects. However, we have not yet adopted a comprehensive cloud migration strategy across the organization.
Question 4: Are there any industry-specific regulations or compliance requirements that GRC must adhere to when moving to the cloud?
Answer: Yes, since GRC operates in multiple countries and handles sensitive customer data, we must adhere to various privacy and data protection regulations, including GDPR and PCI DSS. We also need to ensure that the cloud provider's data centers are compliant with these regulations.
Question 5: Are there any parts of the business or technologies that GRC is not willing to move to the cloud?
Answer: Our primary focus is on migrating applications and services that will provide immediate benefits in terms of performance, scalability, and cost efficiency. However, we will carefully assess each component of our infrastructure to determine the feasibility, impact, and potential risks associated with moving them to the cloud.
Question 6: What are the specific pain points GRC wants to address with respect to data analytics and reporting in the current setup?
Answer: Currently, our data analytics and reporting processes are time-consuming and resource-intensive, making it difficult to obtain insights quickly. We would like to explore cloud-based big data and analytics solutions that can help us process and analyze large volumes of data faster, more efficiently, and in real-time if possible.
Question 7: What is GRC's preferred approach to adopting DevOps practices and incorporating them into the existing software development lifecycle?
Answer: We are open to adopting a phased approach to incorporating DevOps practices into our existing processes, starting with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). We would like to focus on improving the collaboration between development, testing, and operations teams and streamlining our deployment process using DevOps tools.
Question 8: How does GRC manage and secure sensitive customer data in its current infrastructure?
Answer: We employ various security best practices, such as encryption at rest and in transit, secure access controls, periodic security audits, and ongoing employee training on data protection. Additionally, we use security and compliance tools to ensure a high level of security for our sensitive customer data.
Question 9: What is the preferred method of data integration between the existing on-premises systems and the proposed cloud-based solutions for GRC while migrating?
Answer: GRC is open to using cloud-based data integration services that facilitate the seamless transfer of data between on-premises systems and cloud-based solutions. For this purpose, we prefer to use services for data movement and integration while maintaining data security and integrity.
Question 10: What are GRC's current identity and access management strategies, and how do they plan to handle authentication and authorization for cloud-based services?
Answer: We currently use Active Directory on-premises for managing user identities, access controls, and permissions. We plan to integrate Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) with our existing Active Directory infrastructure to extend these capabilities into the cloud. This will provide a consistent and secure identity and access management solution for both on-premises and cloud-based services.
Question 11: Does GRC have any in-house expertise in AI/ML or any existing solutions that leverage AI/ML technologies?
Answer: In recent years, we have been exploring AI/ML technologies, and a few of our employees have some experience with Microsoft's AI/ML offerings, such as Azure Machine Learning and Cognitive Services. However, we have yet to deploy any large-scale AI/ML solutions across GRC. We are eager to adopt more AI/ML workloads to enhance demand forecasting, personalized marketing, and customer support, leveraging the cloud's capabilities.
Question 12: What performance, availability, and disaster recovery requirements does GRC have for its cloud-based solutions?
Answer: GRC expects high performance, availability, and disaster recovery for its cloud-based solutions. We require low-latency access to our systems and near real-time access to the data. We expect the cloud service provider to offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that commit to high availability percentages (99.9% or above). For disaster recovery, GRC prefers leveraging the geographic redundancy features offered by cloud providers, ensuring a swift recovery of critical systems in case of any disaster or interruption.
Question 13: Can you provide information on GRC's anticipated budget for the cloud migration and ongoing operational costs?
Answer: GRC acknowledges that cloud migration will require an initial investment but expects the resulting cost savings, efficiency improvements, and business agility to offset these costs significantly. We are looking for cloud-based solutions that offer flexible and cost-effective pricing models, such as pay-as-you-go or consumption-based pricing. While we cannot provide an exact budget at this stage, we encourage you to incorporate cost optimization strategies in your proposals, keeping both initial migration costs and ongoing operational expenses in mind.
Question 14: How does GRC plan to handle changes in its organization, staff roles, and skills requirements following cloud migration and adoption of new technologies?
Answer: We understand that the transition to the cloud involves not just technology changes but also changes to our organization and staff roles. As part of our cloud migration strategy, we plan to foster a culture of continuous learning and training programs for our staff. This will include training materials, workshops, and certification opportunities in relevant cloud technologies. We also anticipate that some staff roles may evolve or change to better support our new cloud-based infrastructure.
Question 15: What are GRC's expectations for support and maintenance services provided by the selected cloud service provider?
Answer: GRC expects the cloud service provider to offer comprehensive support and maintenance services for the cloud-based components of the proposed solution. This includes access to technical support, service availability guarantees as part of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and regular updates and upgrades to ensure the continued reliability, performance, and security of the services. Additionally, we expect the provider to offer resources like documentation, forums, and best practices to help our team smoothly transition to the new cloud environment.
Question 16: How does GRC handle backups and disaster recovery for its on-premises systems, and what are the expectations for cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions?
Answer: For our on-premises systems, we perform regular backups and store them at an offsite location to ensure data protection in case of a disaster. As we move to the cloud, we expect to leverage the built-in backup and disaster recovery solutions provided by cloud providers, which offer efficient, secure, and cost-effective options for protecting our data and applications. We are looking for solutions that offer quick recovery times, simple management, and compliance with relevant regulations.
Question 17: How important is data sovereignty and residency for GRC when migrating to the cloud?
Answer: Data sovereignty and residency are crucial aspects for GRC, as we operate in multiple countries with varying data protection and privacy regulations. We expect the proposed cloud-based solutions to comply with local data residency requirements by using the cloud provider's regional data centers to store and process data. This will help us ensure that we meet the regulatory requirements of each country we operate in, as well as minimize latency and improve performance for our users.
Question 18: Are there any specific cloud services or technologies that GRC prefers to use or avoid for the cloud migration and transformation project?
Answer: GRC does not have any strict preferences or restrictions regarding specific cloud services or technologies. We are open to using any cloud services or tools that best address our challenges and meet our goals, as long as they align with our business objectives, budget, and compliance requirements. However, we expect the proposed solutions to prioritize tools and technologies that are compatible with our existing infrastructure.
Question 19: What is GRC's plan for monitoring and managing the performance, security, and health of its cloud-based solutions?
Answer: GRC plans to leverage the cloud provider's built-in monitoring and management tools to gain insights into the performance, security, and health of our cloud-based solutions. We will also look into integrating these tools with our existing monitoring and management systems to ensure a seamless and comprehensive view of our entire infrastructure. We expect the proposed solutions to include guidance on configuring and using these tools effectively, as well as recommendations for any additional third-party tools that may be beneficial.
Question 20: How does GRC plan to handle the potential increase in network traffic and bandwidth requirements resulting from the cloud migration?
Answer: We understand that migrating to the cloud may increase network traffic and bandwidth requirements, particularly during the transition period and initial stages of cloud adoption. To address these challenges, GRC plans to work closely with network service providers to ensure adequate bandwidth and network capacity. Additionally, we will consider using the cloud provider's networking and content delivery services to optimize network performance, reduce latency, and minimize the impact of increased network traffic.