Cloud modernization brought the scale needed to meet modern customer expectations

What is Cloud Modernization?

Defining the concept and its relevance to modern businesses

Cloud modernization is the transformative process of updating an organization’s applications, infrastructure, and operations to fully utilize the capabilities of cloud computing technologies. This journey involves migrating applications and data from traditional on-premises setups to dynamic cloud environments. It also includes re-architecting, re-platforming, or even replacing legacy systems to harness cloud-native features effectively.

For modern businesses, cloud modernization is not just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic imperative. It enables companies to innovate rapidly, respond swiftly to market changes, and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly crowded marketplace. By embracing cloud environments, businesses can achieve greater agility, scalability, and efficiency, positioning themselves for sustained growth and success.

Benefits of Cloud Modernization

Highlighting advantages such as scalability, efficiency, and improved CX

Cloud modernization delivers a multitude of benefits that can significantly enhance an organization’s operations and customer interactions:

• Scalability: With cloud modernization, businesses can dynamically adjust their resource capacity to meet fluctuating demands. This ensures that they can handle peak loads efficiently without the need for over-provisioning resources.
• Efficiency: Cloud modernization streamlines IT management by delegating many operational responsibilities to the cloud provider. This allows IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance tasks.
• Improved CX: Cloud modernization enables organizations to offer exceptional customer experiences by providing seamless and secure access to applications and services from anywhere.
• Cost Savings: Adopting pay-as-you-go pricing models through cloud modernization helps organizations achieve significant cost savings. It reduces operational expenses and optimizes resource utilization.
• Innovation: Cloud modernization empowers businesses to experiment with new technologies, innovate rapidly, and drive business growth.

By leveraging these advantages, organizations can enhance their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver superior customer experiences, all while fostering a culture of innovation.

Extensive business growth demanded a more scalable and user-friendly cloud infrastructure

Due to extensive business growth, a leading player in home heating began to outgrow its existing online service platform that allows homeowners and installers to control heat pumps from anywhere. This started to negatively affect customer feedback. The transition to cloud technologies posed challenges and resistance, highlighting the importance of managing change effectively to facilitate cloud adoption.

The company sought a strategic partner to help improve and optimize the control and monitoring of remote ground-source heat pumps. The online service had to be flexible enough to adapt to the business’s needs as it expanded and developed and be on par with the ever-changing expectations of end-users, whether homeowners or installers. Optimizing cloud resources was crucial for enhancing cost efficiency and performance.

The client prioritized stability and a smooth end-user experience, as well as during the system update process.

Two birds with one stone: Simultaneous cloud migration and improved CX

Proekspert was trusted with both tasks: improving the software architecture and bringing the system’s end-user experience to the next level. The migration process involved several steps, including assessing the current infrastructure, planning the move, and executing the transition to the cloud. This structured approach helped manage risks and challenges, ensuring a smooth transition.

Additionally, cloud service providers facilitate significant cost savings through pay-as-you-go pricing models, which help businesses avoid large upfront investments in hardware. They also offer reliability with multiple data centers and robust backup solutions that ensure high availability and data protection.

Migration of the solution to the cloud

Proekspert rebuilt the system architecture so that it’s scalable, more efficient, and modular—supporting multiple product upgrades simultaneously. Maintaining a secure cloud environment during this migration was crucial to protecting sensitive data and ensuring compliance with regulations.

Functionalities were moved to the cloud one by one, replacing the existing code with a more efficient one. Proekspert provided Azure cloud hosting and moved all data servers to the cloud. It is essential to keep IT teams updated with the latest cloud technologies to manage these cloud environments effectively.

We are proud of our ability to deliver the improved solution gradually so that the end-user experiences only a system becoming better without any downtime annoyances that sometimes come with system updates.

Substantially improving the product and customer experience

Our design team was trusted to interview real end-users – homeowners and installers. Then, we analyzed the existing solution thoroughly. Based on the collected data, we mapped product improvement needs, emphasizing the importance of access management in safeguarding sensitive data and ensuring compliance.

We updated the online monitoring tool to enable timely action, a critical part of the service for end-users, making heat pumps a service as routine as water or electricity. Leveraging cloud technology can further enhance customer experience by integrating advanced features and ensuring ongoing optimization.

We helped improve the overall customer experience so that the end-users actually felt the difference.

With the cloud, the client can focus on growth

Moving the online system to the cloud was a natural next step because innovation has been the backbone of the client’s business for over 50 years. Utilizing cloud providers has improved not only scalability but also flexibility and stability.

The cloud enables the customer’s remote control solution to keep up with business growth and changing customer needs. Installers can more conveniently monitor and troubleshoot issues on the go, and the client may use collected data to develop better and more energy-efficient products. Tracking metrics and KPIs is crucial to measure the success of cloud modernization efforts.

The new design is clean, intuitive, and user-friendly, delivering a much better customer experience.

Impact on the client business during the cloud modernization journey

The solution is enjoying significant growth in usage because it’s scalable and built to meet the growing needs of the end customer. Adhering to best practices is crucial for achieving successful cloud modernization, ensuring a smooth transition and optimizing cloud environments.

Thanks to the availability of online operational data, heat pump installers can support homeowners’ heat pumps more easily and at a lower cost. Additionally, adopting a multi-cloud approach by combining multiple cloud providers with on-premises infrastructure enhances flexibility and allows organizations to avoid vendor lock-in.

Our client’s support call center load decreased significantly. Most complaint calls and emails ended immediately after improvements went live.

Our client is now focused on building new products instead of servicing the existing system – all at a much lower cost.

Technology stack and competencies

• Multi-part single application
• MS Azure, C#, .NET Core, EF Core, MS SQL, Kubernetes, Docker, React JS
• Scalable device cloud platform
• Compatibility issues with legacy systems often arise when integrating modern cloud technologies, necessitating extensive reengineering efforts for successful migration.
• Private cloud solutions can be used for sensitive data while leveraging public cloud resources for core applications, enhancing flexibility and scalability.

Proekspert helps organizations modernize and use the cloud in several ways:

• Rehosting (Lift and Shift): Moving existing applications to the cloud without changing the architecture. A quick way to get to the cloud and start using cloud infrastructure.
• Replatforming: This is modifying the application architecture or its components to align with cloud-native features and capabilities. It is a balance between rehosting and rearchitecting.
• Rearchitecting: This involves transforming the application architecture and components to fully utilize cloud-native capabilities like microservices, serverless, and distributed databases. It has the most long-term benefits.
• Reimagining: This involves replacing on-premises applications with cloud-based alternatives offered through SaaS models. These alternatives often provide similar or better functionality.
• Retire or Retain: This is assessing current applications to decide to retire them because they are redundant or obsolete or to keep them as is if they don’t meet cloud migration criteria or are slated for replacement in the future.

By using these cloud modernization strategies, organizations can modernize, use the cloud and grow their business through Proekspert. This will also help deliver amazing customer experiences in a digital world.