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.

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