A Global Commercial Real Estate Services and Investment Company: Reengineering the Product Suite for Optimized Cloud Integration

A Global Commercial Real Estate Services and Investment Company:

Reengineering the Product Suite for Optimized Cloud Integration

Industry: HiTech

Delivery Center: Costa Rica

Industry Context

With the evolving commercial real estate sector, investors demand real-time global market intelligence along with comprehensive property listings. Commercial real estate services providers need a robust platform to cater to these market needs. To stay ahead of the competition, they need a modern, scalable, cloud-based platform that can seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure, providing real-time access to market insights and property listings, enhancing efficiency and decision-making for both the client and its customers.

Client Challenge

The client is a global commercial real estate services and investment company, offering comprehensive solutions and data-driven insights to facilitate investing in, buying, and selling commercial properties. The client was currently relying on on-premises infrastructure, which posed significant challenges. New customer onboarding stretched over 4-6 weeks, hindering rapid business integration. The system struggled to scale dynamically to accommodate seasonal spikes in demand. On-premises provisioning for peak loads resulted in escalating costs. Differences between non-prod and prod ecosystems caused unexpected release issues. The rudimentary DevOps setup heavily relied on the release management team, making the release of new versions a significant event requiring full-team engagement. Additionally, there was a noticeable deficiency in support for ultra-high availability, leading to unexpected release issues that potentially affected customer satisfaction and system reliability.

Approach

Encora leveraged Azure as the preferred cloud platform due to its seamless integration with the client's existing .Net stack. Moreover, Encora’s extensive experience in managing FMPilot ecosystem, and Azure's robust capabilities in reengineering and migrating large-scale enterprise products to the cloud made Azure the platform of choice. We optimized and secured the client’s cloud infrastructure through:

Product Management: Developed a deep understanding of clients' cloud migration needs, crafting a meticulous roadmap. This encompassed release planning, product backlog oversight, and UAT support.

Cloud Migration: Executed a seamless migration of the on-premises facility source ecosystem to Azure.

Product Development: Established a target cloud blueprint, identified critical components for cloud reengineering, and conducted essential PoCs. This involved adapting the code for cloud PaaS integration. Prioritized code reengineering to harness Azure PaaS tools, including Azure Key Vault and Azure Service Bus.

Web & Mobile App Design & Development: Upgraded the existing product suite with a richer UI, leveraging Bootstrap and Angular technologies.

DevSecOps Strategy & Planning: Established a comprehensive DevOps toolchain, scripted infrastructure protocols, and bridged discrepancies between non-prod and prod ecosystems, ensuring fluid deliveries across all environments.

Test Automation: Instituted smoke and regression automated testing suites and assimilated them within the DevOps pipeline.

Azure Services

Azure Active Directory

Azure Load Balancer

Azure Front Door

Azure Blob Storage

Azure Monitor

Azure Application Insights

Azure Send Grid

Azure Key Vault

Azure Service Bus

Azure SQL

Results

By leveraging Azure, Encora successfully addressed the client's challenges and achieved significant outcomes. Azure's seamless integration with the client's existing .Net stack, coupled with Encora's expertise in managing the FMPilot ecosystem, facilitated a smooth migration from on-premises to cloud infrastructure. This resulted in optimized and secured cloud infrastructure, enabling dynamic scaling. Azure's robust capabilities in reengineering and migrating large-scale enterprise products ensured enhanced application availability and real-time monitoring of the application infrastructure. Key outcomes include: