Project snapshot
An online electronics store grew into the top online retailer in Eastern Europe, with a marketplace featuring 4 million goods and 2.5 million daily visitors. The company was one of the first to revolutionize online shopping in the target market and now attracts around 800 million visitors every year, with 81% of them becoming returning customers. But while the business evolved, the company’s technology stack became dated and was unable to keep pace with operational growth and customers’ demands. It was a significant blocker, limiting the pace of innovation and detracting from the customer experience.
Intellias was brought in to analyze the client’s current environment and database design, consult on database migration, and improve overall marketplace performance.
In 2022, approximately 2.56 billion people worldwide purchased goods online. The growth of online shopping is in full swing and shows no signs of slowing down. Retailers must keep up with this hectic pace and create unique customer experiences to win the competition.
Business challenges of a fast-growing and award-winning retailer
As our client’s business grew considerably, their proprietary platform and the database architecture it relied on faced a heavy load. But serving over two million daily users turned out to be too much for the platform to handle.
The database design was outdated and the size of the database itself (measured in gigabytes) was growing substantially, rapidly, and unsustainably, slowing down performance on a regular basis. It’s no wonder that our client set out to migrate their platform to a new database management system.
Having started the migration process on their own, the company soon encountered several roadblocks. The system was not completed by the internal deadline, and there was no unified rollout plan to orchestrate the entire development process from start to finish.
By teaming up with Intellias, the online retailer expected to acquire a future-proof roadmap to lead their data migration within an extremely tight timeframe. We provided technical consulting and conducted an in-depth analysis of the eCommerce database environment, recommending performance improvements to achieve round-the-clock high platform availability and ensure the website is always up and running efficiently.
Solution delivered
Intellias provided a much-needed fresh look by an outside expert at our client’s database design and enterprise architecture. Our team helped the retailer align their processes with commonly accepted approaches to high-load system implementation and advised on functionality, infrastructure, and product quality.
Technical consulting
Our primary goal was to carry out a thorough analysis of our client’s systems and processes. Intellias examined the infrastructure implementation, set up testing processes, and organized the code. We then mapped out an action plan for replatforming with two main categories for action:
- Quick wins: Improvements, both technical and organizational, that could be delivered quickly
- Overall strategic recommendations: A general outline of approaches to the development process, infrastructure, and DevOps as a service to build a modern and scalable high-load system
After thoroughly analyzing the current environment and the eCommerce database design, our DevOps experts defined the following criteria that helped us craft a viable strategy for migrating the client’s database to a new database management system:
- Starting database volume of 100 GB, with expected quarterly growth of 50 percent
- Initial expected throughput of 100 RPS
- Virtual machines in use featuring 4 CPUs and 16 GB of RAM
- Need to eliminate database idle time
To achieve greater reliability and scalability, we assessed various data management systems, examining data protection, replication methods, and known cluster issues. Our thorough analysis showed that the PostgreSQL data management system offered the high performance and replication methods our client needed to cope with large volumes of data.
Intellias also worked out a step-by-step rollout guide for our client, including a disaster recovery plan. We performed a scenario analysis and challenged our client’s team to have a synchronized plan that addresses:
- possible rollout scenarios
- responsibilities of each team member
- team interactions in different scenarios
- order of actions
- monitoring of system events
In addition, we consulted our client on various aspects of business operations, including scalability, customer experience, speedy time to market, efficiency, and risk assessment and management.
Outcomes and value
We gave our client a much-needed push to proceed with necessary changes to infrastructure and internal processes. Our team took pressure off the client’s team by equipping them with the necessary tools and a detailed plan for eCommerce platform migration.
As a result of our work, we managed to future-proof the client’s database infrastructure and make it substantially more enduring. We provided a solid foundation for future development of new features and greater scalability to withstand high loads.
Intellias presented the client with a sound roadmap for migrating to PostgreSQL — a move that would have a significant impact on the retailer’s operational growth. Our viable migration strategy ensured greater reliability and scalability for the retailer’s eCommerce database design and infrastructure.
We also provided the client with IT consultancy and technical support while bringing their strategy to life.
Viable database migration strategy
Innovation at scale
Optimized development ecosystem
