Swan Solutions’ 6-Phase ‘Migration to Azure’ Program To Transform Business

Introduction

Smollan India Pvt Ltd., is an expert in delivering growth to its customers through brand strategies, Smollan prides itself on partnering with their customers to boost growth by expanding distribution and driving sales and putting together exceptional shopper experiences. Simply said, Smollan is the crucial seam where the retailer, brand owner and the shopper meet.

Problem

Smollan approached Swan Solutions when unforeseen circumstances began to affect their ability to perform the best for their customers. They were struggling with a few things:

• Global access required for use of resources by internal users as well as customers
• System compute limitation of India Infra during peak business hours
• A traditional DR & backup process
• Legacy OS & Database

Solution

To overcome these challenges, Swan designed and delivered Azure Platform As a Service (PAAS) . We upgraded SQL server database to SQL 2017 and restructured SQL DB as per the customer’s requirement. We also made changes in the DNS to increase reliability. Our solution resulted in, an azure consumption of USD 300K, which will be increase 200% in next 9 months.

The solution was deployed in a series of six phases:

The benefits of each phase is immediately apparent, as illustrated comprehensively in the following table:

Cloud Assessment

Financial Assessment (TCO calculation) Security and Compliance Assessment Technical Assessment (Classify application types) Identify the tools that can be reused and the tools that need to be built Migrate licensed products Migrate licensed products Create a plan and measure success

Business case for migration (Lower TCO, faster time to market, higher flexibility & agility, scalability + elasticity) Identify gaps between customer current traditional legacy architecture and next generation cloud architecture

Cloud Assessment

Financial Assessment (TCO calculation) Security and Compliance Assessment Technical Assessment (Classify application types) Identify the tools that can be reused and the tools that need to be built Migrate licensed products Migrate licensed products Create a plan and measure success

Business case for migration (Lower TCO, faster time to market, higher flexibility & agility, scalability + elasticity) Identify gaps between customer current traditional legacy architecture and next generation cloud architecture

Proof of Concept

Get customer’s feet wet with AZURE Build a pilot and validate the technology Test existing software in the cloud

Build confidence with various AZURE services Mitigate risk by validating critical pieces of customer’s proposed architecture

Moving Customer Data

Understand different storage options in the AZURE cloud Migrate fileservers to AZURE FILESTORAGE Migrate commercial RDBMS to Azure SQL (DAAS)

Redundancy, Durable Storage, Elastic Scalable Storage Automated Management Backup

Moving your Apps

Forklift migration strategy Hybrid migration strategy Build “cloud-aware” layers of code as needed Create VM Template for each component

Future-proof scaled-out service-oriented elastic architecture Transform & Implement BI in Azure

Leveraging the Cloud

Leverage other AZURE services Automate elasticity and Microsoft SDL Harden security Create dashboard to manage AZURE resources Leverage multiple availability region

Reduction in CapEx in IT Flexibility and Agility Automation and improved productivity Higher Availability (HA) DR with ASR Backup on AZURE Cloud

Optimization

Optimize usage based on demand Improve effciency Implement AZURE Monitor and Insights Re-engineer customer application Decompose your relational databases

Better visibility through AZURE Monitor and Insights Increased utilization and transformation impact in Opex

We attribute the success of Smollan’s Data Centre Trasformation to the joint expertise and effort of our Internal team and Swan’s cloud team.

We trusted Microsoft Azure as it offered the most reliable technology and value for money

– SMOLLAN

No Fear with Azure

By carrying out our meticulous phases of migration and leveraging the customer to Azure, we enabled Smollan to acknowledge and get rid of a skill gap. Instead, Smollan was able to deploy modern, more efficient apps, to serve their customers better. The Microsoft technologies we used to achieve this were:

• SQL 2017 on Azure IAAS and Webapps & Websites on Azure PAAS
• Azure Site Recovery for DR and Azure Backup on Cloud for VM & SQL Backup
• Change Management in Application
• Global Accessibility of Resources
• SQL Database Performance

With Microsoft Azure, Smollan saw the value and return on investment for data recovery and for business in the long term. The organisation now carries out its operations without stumbling, or any fear of data loss. Our team guided the customer through the entire migration process, making it a smooth, uncomplicated transition.

What’s great about the solution architecture is that it can apply to more circumstances than one. Smollan India is involved in data analytics and we were able to transition them into using Azure Webapps with BI integration to achieve better data analytics. The solution can be applied to any survey and data analytical company where the concurrent session to multiple interlinked applications is expected to be exponential. With this solution, multiple concurrent users can use the application from personal devices (mobile, laptop and tablet), hassle-free. Since PAAS service is so flexible, no congestion is expected when accessing the applications. Azure Security provides a secure and compliant infrastructure, and ASR provides low RTO/RPO as per the customer’s requirement. So it is all about carrying on the business better, with this Swan Solutions and Microsoft Azure partnership.