Retail & Luxury
A luxury Brand
A new integration platform for a luxury brand
Context
Astrakhan was asked by a major player in the world of luxury and retail to build and deploy the next generation of its integration platform in Asia-Pacific.
Our achievements
• General and detailed design of the new platform based on Microsoft Azure (API Management, iPaaS, Azure Data Factory) and Azure DevOps for CI/CD (pipeline automation, infrastructure as code),
• Build and deploy Development, Test, Acceptance and Production environments for two platforms (Asia-Pacific and China),
• Design of the Enterprise Architecture metamodel on Ardoq to ensure the governance and management of the platform (impact and reusability analyses),
• Implementation of the operational model (management process of the enterprise architecture, the platform, the build projects, and the run projects),
• Training of domain teams (architects and domain managers) in the use of the enterprise architecture repository,
• Implementation of the API portfolio and guidelines for the design and use of APIs, customization of the API Manager portal to transform it into a resource portal for all integration needs,
• Implementation of a business-oriented monitoring console to control the interfaces, their performance and ensure the autonomy of the disaster recovery,
• Design of the migration of legacy middleware to the new platform (strategy, scenarios, planning),
• Management of the integration project portfolio and management of subcontractors in Hong Kong and India for Build and Run (50+ engineers),
• Delivered 40 projects including 500+ interfaces and APIs in the first 12 months of operation,
• Management of the strengthening of the architecture towards high availability.
Client Benefits
Our work allowed the consolidation of the different middleware platforms towards the new generation, by homogenizing and streamlining the design of interfaces using use cases and design patterns to ensure:
• The industrialization of practices as well as the respect of the norms and standards of the market at the state of the art, in a context of strong demand with the necessity to deliver more than 40 projects and 500 interfaces from the first year,
• Improved stability of the middleware and a reduction in operational incidents, with improved performance, reduced costs and a smaller environmental footprint,
• Empowerment of developers and users through applications such as the Portal or the Business Monitoring Console.
New practices have been created and deployed with support for change. For the first time, API-based applications have been deployed, enabling the application of the “API First” strategy.
Our added value
Astrakhan’s expertise in middleware / API architectures, along with the delivery of integration projects in agile mode, was fully displayed in this context. Combining middleware and enterprise architecture repository is an original vision that requires a real experience of both disciplines in order to bring them together, which Astrakhan benefits from. This expertise has also been useful in defining a migration strategy allowing our client to move towards a single middleware that becomes the flow manager for the entire company and the composition tool for future business applications.
