Retail & Consumer Goods
Flexible digital platform for optimized customer service and long-term business success
The Challenge
Our client is a pharmaceutical wholesaler with thousands of member pharmacies. In addition to supplying medications, it provides member pharmacies with a comprehensive range of services. To improve customer loyalty and satisfaction, our client has developed a reservation system that allows end consumers to place orders with their local pharmacy. The reservation system is an online platform that allows end customers to reserve or order medications and other health products online across our client’s entire pharmacy network throughout Germany. The platform enables customers to first find a conveniently located pharmacy, order medications there, and, if necessary, upload the corresponding prescriptions. Customers are informed about the availability of their medications and can then either pick them up themselves or use the pharmacy’s delivery service. In addition to reserving or ordering medications, the platform offers the opportunity to find topic- or product-specific information on a wide variety of health-related issues. The platform was to be operated entirely in the cloud. Since this is a portal for end customers, the focus was not only on the user-friendliness of the interfaces but also, in particular, on non-functional requirements such as the continuous availability of services and flexible adaptation to different load scenarios. These requirements—and in particular the desire for continuous development and the introduction of new functionalities without maintenance windows or downtime—were met through the use of Docker container architecture and the operation of the containers in a Kubernetes cluster. HyPlus was commissioned for the DevOps tasks, test automation, and operation of the product in the Azure cloud, as the company demonstrated extensive experience from similar projects and could point to an already productive reference project.
Our solution
HyPlus provided the following services for the construction of the platform:
- Development of an architecture and operating concept for cloud operation
- Setting up a cloud infrastructure for container architectures
- Supporting the development team in the "containerization" of services
- Automation of build and deployment processes by setting up CI/CD pipelines as part of a DevOps approach
- Test automation
- 24/7 monitoring and operation of the platform
The cloud architecture is based on software packaged in Docker containers and managed by a Kubernetes cluster. The logging, monitoring and alerting tools Prometheus and Grafana were used to ensure smooth operation.
In close cooperation with our customer's specialist colleagues, all key business processes were "cast" into test cases parallel to development, which were automated on the basis of the Selenium test framework. This created the technological and infrastructural basis for integrating test automation into the automated build and deployment process as a key component of quality assurance.
HyPlus also ensures the smooth operation of the online platform in the Microsoft Azure cloud.
The result
The application runs in multi-instance Docker containers that are orchestrated by a Kubernetes cluster. Operation in the cloud in conjunction with Kubernetes as an orchestration tool allows fine-grained scalability and elasticity of the system.
The automation of the test processes ensures that the functionality of the online platform can be tested after changes and extensions in the shortest possible time and regression can be avoided. The rapid passage of quality gateways in conjunction with the ability to put new features into operation at any time without downtime will significantly support the future development of the platform.
HyPlus's operation of the application in collaboration with our client's development team demonstrates that DevOps can be successfully implemented across organizations.
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