Telefonica & Huawei jointly launched the Open Cloud public cloud service to fulfill Andreani’s business requirements,creating three-step cloudification plan: cloudify e-Commerce, reduce SAP network delays, and cloudify the DR system for core warehousing.
HIGHLIGHTS
From the time it was announced, the impact of China’s Internet+ strategy has been felt around the world. Products related to the strategy have become hot commodities, while data is increasingly being recognized as an increasingly vital resource, with some even dubbing data as “the new oil”. It is clear that big data is now the key to the future of technological transformation.
In the information age, the logistics industry is increasingly becoming interconnected with ecommerce, retail and a range of other services. Many new partnerships are being forged; in China, courier service Shunfeng has entered the retail business and Cainao Logistics is working with ecommerce giant Taobao. As a result of such changes, the data created from such businesses is set to grow exponentially, as logistics companies evolve into big-data companies, and data strategy becomes the core business strategy.
Today, the global logistics industry is worth more than $8.5 trillion, and is growing at nearly 7 percent annually. And while “multi-type, multi-structure, multi-industry” data is providing strategic value, it is also providing new challenges to the digital transformation of global logistics enterprises.
Andreani provides complete logistics services for a range of industries, with operations extending to South America’s other major market, Brazil.
But with the increasing volume of business, Andreani’s data was growing at a faster and faster rate. The company also faced a classic IT upgrade problem: its original IT architecture was not flexible enough to respond to large-scale concurrent operation demands, putting growing pressure on its business. A digital transformation was sorely needed.
Customer Historey
As the largest logistics enterprise in Argentina, Andreani Logistics Group is a leader in advanced IT planning, construction concepts, and digital systems.
1945, Andreani was founded in Santa Fe, Argentina.
1970, Andreani expanded into Buenos Aires, Argentina
1985, Andreani fully integrated its logistics business
2002, Andreani entered the Brazil marketing and launched logistics business in St Paul
CHALLENGE
Four service bottlenecks
As data was the source of Andreani’s problems, data integration, storage and cloud computing would be the key to the solution. As the company undertook its digital transformation, there were four issues that emerged:
- First, Andreani manages almost all of its servers on cloud platforms or in hosting mode. At present, four carriers provide services for Andreani's data centers. So, it lacks a unified platform for centralized O&M.
- Second, after launching its e-Commerce platform, the increasing traffic and lack of scalability in its system architecture cannot flexibly allocate resources to match needs. Users frequently struggle to log into the platform during peak hours, user experience is poor, and Disaster Recovery (DR) is non-existent.
- Third, logistics real-time requirements need large dedicated networks that remain stable. However, the cloud service provider of Andreani's SAP ERP system didn’t build any local nodes, increasing network delay for application systems and causing user experience to deteriorate.
- Fourth, Andreani's core warehousing system uses VMware’s Veeam solution for remote DR. But, the DR center’s construction costs were high and the center doesn’t guarantee that services aren’t interrupted.
As an industry leader, Andreani's problems are representative of the entire logistics industry in its early transformation period. It needed new solutions from working together with upstream and downstream supply chains, as well as new links with cross-industry ecosystem partners.
SOLUTION
Telefonica Open Cloud to the rescue
In October 2016, Huawei and Telefonica Business Solutions jointly released Open Cloud and Cloud Server services in Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, consolidating the partners’ collaboration on cloudifying traditional IT enterprises. In addition to technical support for both Open Cloud and Cloud Server, Huawei’s solutions cover software and hardware, including servers, storage, networks, and cloud operating systems.
To address Andreani's four business requirements, Telefonica developed four specific solutions for planning, rectification, and follow-up O&M based on the carrier’s two cloud solutions:
- O&M: formulate a cloudification plan for migrating existing application systems to Telefonica Open Cloud and manage scattered data centers on a unified O&M platform.
- Infrastructure: deploy cloud servers and elastic, scalable services to cloudify the IT infrastructure of Andreani's eCommerce platform, enabling the platform to easily scale resources up or down.
- User experience: use Telefonica’s network resources and geographical advantages to improve user experience of cloud applications, and build local nodes to reduce network delays from affecting Andreani's service applications like SAP DEV and QAS.
- DR: implement a PAYU-based DR solution for core warehousing that’s stable and cost-effective.
RESULTS
The DR solution provided by Open Cloud is particularly noteworthy.
For CIOs in any industry, data center disaster recovery is a key issue worth millions of dollars. For the logistics industry, disaster recovery is an issue of more than money, as a problem with a data center may lead to the collapse of the entire logistics chain, easily causing major catastrophes stemming from a minor fault.
The DR solution provided by Open Cloud has not only addressed the DR issues in the logistics industry, but become one of Open Cloud's successful business application models, providing a support for future market expansions in related fields.
Three-step plan for getting smart
Telefonica and Huawei jointly launched the Open Cloud public cloud service to fulfill Andreani’s business requirements and then created the following customized three-step cloudification plan: cloudify e-Commerce, reduce SAP network delays, and cloudify the DR system for core warehousing.
Currently, the project is in the second phase.
So far, Andreani can centrally manage resources on heterogeneous cloud platforms, thus improving O&M efficiency. By setting up and optimizing a complete set of backup and DR solutions, including migration, coupled with high-performance and reliable solutions, Andreani has reduced its DR TCO.
Telefonica Open Cloud has paved the way for the evolution of Andreani's service offerings to IoT, robotics, and process optimization, accelerating the Argentine company’s digital transformation into a smart logistics leader.
