Managed Azure Data & Infrastructure Operations for a Sports Equipment Provider

The client is the industry leader in creating next-generation products for sports, recreation, protection, and personal use.

To meet the client’s requirements for a 24/7/365 website uptime, scalability, and high availability capable of handling 50k+ new user sessions regularly, SNP Technologies designed and implemented a robust solution using Azure services that provided the necessary performance, load balancing, and resilience.

To address the client’s performance challenges and meet their business objectives, SNP Technologies undertook a deep engagement with the client to define their needs and understand the shortcomings of their previous website. Based on this analysis, SNP proposed a solution that involved re-platforming the website to Drupal, a powerful open-source content management system (CMS), and hosting it on the Azure platform for enhanced scalability, performance, and reliability.

To get the client production-ready for their new website, SNP leveraged a combination of Nagios, Drupal, and Linux Web Services to ensure performance, scalability, and reliability.

The most significant changes experienced by the client after implementing the new solution with Nagios, Drupal, and Linux Web Services hosted on Azure are as follows:

• The client saw a considerable reduction in downtime during peak customer inflow hours. The website now handles high traffic more efficiently with auto-scaling and load balancing capabilities, ensuring that user experience is not impacted during high demand periods.
• Nagios monitoring provided early detection of any potential issues, allowing the IT team to address them before they could escalate into downtime.
• The website’s performance is now automatically scaled up or down based on real-time traffic, ensuring that the infrastructure supports the increasing number of 50k+ new user sessions without performance degradation.
• With Azure Auto-Scaling and Azure Load Balancer, the system dynamically allocated resources to meet the varying traffic demands, allowing the website to handle peak periods with ease.
• The website's load times improved significantly due to the use of caching mechanisms and CDN (Content Delivery Network). The client saw a marked improvement in user engagement, as faster load times reduced bounce rates and improved conversion rates.
• Optimized database performance and Drupal's caching capabilities allowed faster content delivery, reducing latency for end-users.
• The website was able to provide a seamless, uninterrupted experience to users during traffic spikes, leading to improved customer satisfaction and retention.
• Load Balancing ensured that no single server was overwhelmed with too many requests, thereby maintaining a high-quality user experience even during peak hours.
• Automation in deployment and updates ensured faster rollouts of new features, bug fixes, and security patches without downtime or service disruption.
• The client optimized their operational costs by only utilizing resources when necessary. With auto-scaling, the system could scale down during periods of low demand, thereby reducing the overall cloud infrastructure cost.
• With Azure’s built-in security features like Web Application Firewall (WAF) and SSL/TLS encryption, the website’s security was significantly enhanced.
• The client could now access detailed reports about traffic, user engagement, and server performance, allowing them to make data-driven decisions to improve website operations further.

Overall, the client’s website became significantly more reliable, scalable, and cost-effective, while simultaneously enhancing performance and security. These changes directly contributed to an improved user experience and greater operational efficiency, ultimately helping the client stay ahead of the competition and support their growing customer base.