The Client
Based in Silicon Valley, California, the client provides a Digital Transformation Platform for some of the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor, and consumer goods.
Numerous industry leaders such as Nike, Justin Alexander, Michel Kors, and Jimmy Choo use it’s intuitive, user-friendly, and web-based solutions.
The client’s products follow the “single version of the truth” approach to line planning, global sourcing, calendar management, materials management, quality management, collection management, technical design, and continuous improvement of retail execution.
The client’s industry-first PLM mobile apps help product teams capitalize the instant of inspiration and be in-step with development and implementation anywhere they are.
The Challenge
The client offers PLM solutions for small and medium-sized fashion and apparel industries. It initially hosted its applications on its own data centers which customers could then access. However, this presented several challenges. License fees were steep and out of reach for many. Additionally, customers’ across Europe, Australia, and Asia faced latency issues. Also, onboarding customers would take up to 2-3 weeks.
To resolve these challenges, the client decided to move to the AWS Cloud. It hoped that this migration would reduce their hosting costs and make their services more affordable for the cost-conscious SME market.
While it now offered a better end-user experience using Amazon’s multi-region support, the client’s hosting expenses were still high and it was still a very manual process.
The Solution
After an initial analysis, Synerzip realized that it needed to re-platform and re-architect the client’s lift-and-shift move to the cloud. Synerzip dockerizes their existing application such that it can now run on Linux servers. The use of Docker significantly reduced cost and deployment time. Synerzip delivered the solution in the following phases.
Phase 1 – Containerizing the application
The client’s PLM application was monolithic and ran on Windows servers. It used additional software components for image processing and generating PDF reports. Synerzip containerized each component of this application which now runs as a separate docker container on one or more hosts that collaborate.
Phase 2 – Single-click deployment for hosting on a single server
Using Spring Boot, Synerzip built a Saas application that could,
- Automate infrastructure creation and customer onboarding
- Create a database and execute all database scripts required for the application
- Deploy applications
- Setup necessary access via a load balancer and AWS Route 53
- Create health check alarms
- Verify successful application setup using the smoke test
The first two phases substantially reduced hosting costs. However, Synerzip still needed to address the scalability of applications which led to Phase 3.
Phase 3 – Single-click deployment for hosting on a cluster for high availability
Since all services were running on a single server, it quickly became risk-prone as the single point of failure. In this phase, Synerzip deployed the application on three different servers. These servers are available in different availability zones under AWS regions.
Synerzip also leveraged AWS services such as EFS and Data Pipeline to achieve cluster setup. All containers are managed effectively using Rancher as the orchestration engine. With this architecture, the client now sees high availability and scalability along with reduced hosting costs.
The Outcomes
With Synerzip’s solution, the client can now support customer deployment across North America, Europe, and Asia. With the reduced cost of offering, the client can now better compete within the SME market. Within just 24 months, the client on-boarded 22 customers and reduced hosting costs by 300%.
Using Synerzip’s solution, the client was able to host three live customers within the first milestone. The solution was delivered within three milestones in two years and with a team of four engineers.
Currently, the client hosts 23 SME customers using Synerzip’s solution. Customer onboarding time has now improved to 50 minutes from the earlier 2-3 weeks. This strategic move has helped the client make faster forays into the SME market and offer better end-user experiences.
“Synerzip team is very responsive & quick to adopt new technologies. Team naturally follows best practices, does peer reviews and delivers quality output, thus exceeding client expectations.”
“Synerzip’s agile processes & daily scrums were very valuable, made communication & time zone issues work out successfully.”
“Synerzip’s flexible and responsible team grew to be an extension to the StepOne team. Typical concerns of time zone issues did not exist with Synerzip team.”
“Synerzip worked in perfect textbook Agile fashion – releasing working demos every two weeks. Though aggressive schedules, Synerzip was able to deliver a working product in 90 days, which helped Zimbra stand by their commitment to their customers.”
“Outstanding product delivery and exceptional project management, comes from DNA of Synerzip.”
“Studer product has practically taken a 180% turn from what it was, before Synerzip came in. Synerzip cost is very reasonable as compared to the work they do.”
“Synerzip makes the timezone differences work FOR the customer, enabling a positive experience for us. ‘Seeing is believing’, so we decided to give it a shot and the project was very successful.”
“The Synerzip team seamlessly integrates with our team. We started seeing results within the first sprint. And due to the team’s responsiveness, we were able to get our product to the sales cycle within 7 months.”
“Product management team from Synerzip is exceptional and has a clear understanding of Studer’s needs. Synerzip team gives consistent performance and never misses a deadline.”
“Synerzip is different because of the quality of their leadership, efficient team and clearly set methodologies. Studer gets high level of confidence from Synerzip along with significant cost advantage of almost 50%”
“Synerzip’s hiring approach and practices are worth applauding. Working with Synerzip is like
“What you see is what you get”.”
“Synerzip has dedicated experts for every area. Synerzip helped Tangoe save a lot of cost, still giving a very high quality product.”
“Synerzip gives tremendous cost advantage in terms of hiring and growing the team to be productive verses a readymade team. Synerzip is one company that delivers “co –development” to the core!”
“Synerzip is a great company to work with. Good leadership and a warm, welcoming attitude of the team are additional plus points.”
“Our relationship with Synerzip is very collaborative, and they are our true partners as our values match with theirs.”
“Synerzip has proven to be a great software product co-development partner. It is a leader because of its great culture, its history, and its employee retention policies. ExamSoft’s clients are happy with the product, and that’s how ExamSoft measures that all is going well.”
“They possess a great technical acumen with a burning desire to solve problems. The team always takes the initiative and ownership in all the processes they follow. Synerzip has played a vital role in our scaling up and was a perfect partner in cost, efficiency, and schedules.”
“As we are a startup, things change on a weekly basis, but Synerzip team has been flexible in adapting the same”
“Synerzip team has been very proactive in building the best quality software, bringing in best practices, and cutting edge innovation for our company.”
“We’ve been working for more than six years with Synerzip and its one of the better, if not the best, experience I’ve had working with an outsourcing company.”
“My experience with Synerzip is that they have the talent. You throw a problem at them, and someone from that team helps to solve the issue.”
“The breadth and depth of technical abilities that Synerzip brings on the table and the UX work done by them for this project exceeded my expectations!”
“Synerzip UX designers very closely represent their counterparts in the US in terms of their practice, how they tackle problems, and how they evangelize the value of UX.”
“Synerzip team understood the requirements well and documented them to make sure they understood them rightly.”
“Synerzip is definitely not a typical offshore company. Synerzip team is incredibly communicative, agile, and delivers on its commitments.”
“Working with Synerzip helped us accelerate our roadmap in ways we never thought possible!”
“While working with Synerzip, I get a feeling of working with a huge community of resources, who can jump in with the skills as needed.”
