END USER INSIGHT
OUR GROWTH
AND SUCCESS
HAS BEEN
DOWN TO OUR
CONSTANT
DEDICATION TO
CUSTOMERS.
strengthen our position as an agile
operator and a tech enabler in the region.
We chose to embark on a large
enterprise Digital Transformation
programme and selected AWS as our
partner, with the goal of migrating our
entire technology infrastructure from
on-premise data centres to AWS cloud in
order to increase our agility, security and
speed of innovation.
Why did you select AWS and
what role did Rackspace
Technology play?
We went into the process with the intention
of wanting to consolidate our data centres
and move away from on-premise. We
decided that adopting AWS would be
vital to support our aim of driving further
innovation within our business, providing a
platform for growth and delivering a better
customer service for our users.
We chose AWS because its technology
is similar to the systems we already had
in place and we wanted to begin the
journey with some synergy in place.
Taking advantage of Amazon SageMaker,
a fully managed Machine Learning service
for building, training and deploying
Machine Learning models, our in-house
data science team built a data analytics
and Machine Learning platform on AWS.
To support moving our core IT
backbone to AWS and in the
transformation of the IT landscape
through application modernisation, AWS
recommended Rackspace Technology as
a strategic partner to help us accelerate
our transformation and develop the
design processes that would support
future transformation.
What do you see as the biggest
challenge for Aramex on its
Digital Transformation journey
and how has working with
Rackspace Technology and AWS
cloud benefitted the company?
We want to take the next step of
application modernisation to help us
in our goal of improving the last mile
process and customer experience.
Through working with Rackspace
Technology, we have expanded the
scope of the project to support the
modernisation of our application portfolio.
Both teams are working collaboratively to
design a reusable application architecture
that will enable us to build cloud-native
applications, both repurposing those
already in operation and to support
new applications in the future. This
complex architecture must also support
interactions with our existing on-premise
applications during the migration process,
when both systems must work in unison.
Data will continue to drive many of our
decisions moving forward, with Machine
Learning and AI capabilities being key to
becoming more efficient on the ground
and enabling us to offer a seamless
delivery experience. Removing the
manually intensive processes will be the
key driver for us.
How much of your IT
infrastructure is on-premise
versus that which is outsourced
or managed through the cloud?
We are presently running a hybrid
environment and once the current
roadmap with Rackspace Technology
is completed, we hope that we will
be running a fully managed services
environment powered by AWS.
What have been the main
changes in terms of your overall
product and services offerings
to your customers since you
moved to AWS?
The ultimate goal of this transition is to
modernise our technology to make it
more flexible, robust and agile to adapt in
the rapidly evolving competitive climate.
Thanks to the team’s strategic vision for
the potential of the cloud and technology
within the organisation, we are not only
undergoing cloud transformation, but true
business change.
We are already seeing the results of our
investment in the cloud. The scalability
of the cloud infrastructure was critical in
supporting customers throughout the
30–40% growth rates we experienced
during the pandemic. The reduction of
the on-premise environment resulted in
cost savings, as we have transitioned
away from the seven data centres that we
previously managed.
While the project is still ongoing, moving
away from the monolithic design of the
legacy environment into a cloud-based,
microservices environment is already
starting to deliver against the goal to
adopt a more agile infrastructure. Both
back office products have now been
modernised and sliced into different
productivity stacks.
What initiatives are you focusing
on for the rest of 2020 and what
does the future hold for Aramex?
The transformation is enabling our team
to begin exploring how cloud-based
Machine Learning models could advance
our logistics and transport processes on
the ground. In our data lake, we now have
around 10.2TB of data powering five to six
Machine Learning use cases on the cloud.
This generates over 450,000 predictions
per day – each of which is generated
in just 1.1125 milliseconds. With more
than 10 million history tracking records
generated every day, the deployment of
microservices in these Machine Learning
models will help automate more processes
to drive greater efficiencies that help us
optimise performance and cost.
Our growth and success has been down
to our constant dedication to customers –
and understanding the important role that
technology innovation plays in ensuring
that we are always able to deliver against
their changing expectations. We are
confident that with our new agile cloud
infrastructure, we will be able to further
align our innovative culture to customer
demand to help retain our position as the
preferred partner in our core markets. ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 19
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