Andreani: Cloudification Wrapped in Smart Data

SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As the largest logistics enterprise in Argentina, Andreani Logistics Group is a leader in advanced IT planning, construction concepts, and digital systems. However, the company's growth since it was founded in 1945 has outpaced the capabilities of its legacy IT system. Fortunately, a well-planned cloud solution offered Andreani a way out.

Since its beginnings over 70 years ago, Andreani has expanded into four main businesses covering Argentina and Brazil: Logistics, pharmaceuticals, postal logistics, and real estate. Combined, the resulting service growth caused infrastructural pressures that couldn't be solved by the usual responses: Blind investment and extensive IT construction.

Internet + logistics

In logistics, Andreani is active in the B2B space, providing warehousing and distribution solutions as part of an end-to-end logistics package. Now, it has expanded into the digital realm of eCommerce and stepped up investment in technologies that enhance transaction capabilities.

When Andreani's eCommerce platform went live, it became Argentina's first platform of its type that could provide customers with end-to-end solutions that featured management and control systems for services like product warehousing, packaging, supplier management, and door-to-door delivery.

Andreani now runs multiple branches across Argentina, forming a unified order distribution network supported by a dedicated team that develops online sales solutions and tools to continually optimize processes, warehousing, goods preparation, delivery, and shipment tracking.

Its service scope provides subject matter experts to multinational groups, plus complete and customized eCommerce service solutions that help these groups promote products on their own platforms.

Andreani's customers run into the thousands and include big names like Santander Bank and Hewlett-Packard.

However, its IT capabilities were beginning to let it down.

Four service bottlenecks

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 eCommerce 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 are high and the center doesn't guarantee that services aren't interrupted.

Telefónica Open Cloud to the rescue

In October 2016, Huawei and Telefónica Business Solutions jointly released Open Cloud and Cloud Server services in Chile, Brazil, and Mexico - a partner collaboration to cloudify Andreani's 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, Telefónica 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 to migrate existing application systems to Telefónica 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 Telefónica's network resources and geographical advantages to improve user experience of cloud applications, and build local nodes to prevent 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.

Three-step plan for getting smart

Telefónica and Huawei jointly launched an Open Cloud public cloud service to fulfill Andreani's business requirements, and then created the following customized three-step cloudification plan: Cloudify eCommerce, 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.

Telefónica Open Cloud has paved the way for Andreani to evolve its service offerings to the IoT, robotics, and process optimization, accelerating the Argentine company's digital transformation into a smart logistics leader.

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