E-mobility & energy industry
Thanks to the professional support of Strong Ops GmbH, the Berlin-based company ubitricity was able to migrate its productive systems to the cloud without interruption. Consequently, it resulted in a transition from a mature IT monolith to a decentralized system that is both resilient and manageable.
The company
ubitricity is part of the Shell Group and aims to provide “electricity for everyone, everywhere” with intelligent solutions for charging and billing electric cars. ubitricity is known for converting urban street lamps into charging points for electric vehicles. The charging points integrated into the pole or fixed to the pole enable a quick expansion of dense charging infrastructure for electric vehicles without large-scale construction work. In the UK, ubitricity operates the largest public charging network.
Objective
All productive and secondary existing systems are to be set up as a new cloud solution and adapted to the new IT requirements so that operations do not have to be interrupted. The new cloud solution scales not only for existing but also for new systems and ensures continuous monitoring and alerting.
The challenges
- Complex IT landscape including legacy solutions
- Migration of productive and secondary systems with minimal downtime of operations
- Compliance with security aspects and data protection conformity
- No under- or over-provisioning of the new solution
- Preparation and availability for further expansion (Kubernetes autoscaling)
- Change management (establishing and ensuring processes and know-how within the company)
ubitricity hired Strong Ops GmbH to achieve the following goals:
- Implementation of Kubernetes (K8s) multi-clusters with granular access control, autoscaling and complete CI/CD infrastructure
- No downtime of productive systems during the implementation and migration phases
- ISO certifications
- Data protection guidelines such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other special regulations
- Internal ITSM and integration of existing SIEM solutions
- Compliance with internal and external security requirements
- Ensuring continuous monitoring, alerting and logging
- Robust and future-proof IT infrastructure
The approach
The product and development teams carried out a joint target definition of the new IT architecture. The solution analysis including technical evaluations of the existing systems happened in many intensive iterations. This served as the basis for the decision-making template for the recommended solution and for planning the implementation and migration parallel with operations. As a DevOps architect, Jacek Strongowski successfully ensured transparency of the forthcoming change processes within the affected teams and ongoing communication with all stakeholders involved in the implementation.
The evaluation of the decision template indicated that the Kubernetes (K8s) multi-cluster architecture would be the best fit for the current and future IT landscape. During parallel product developments and launches, the various teams were effectively involved. The systems were implemented and successfully put into operation within 18 months, based on the new target definition. Other benefits included standardized monitoring of the newly introduced system landscape and reliable alerting, ensuring that operations could be monitored and controlled efficiently. Additionally, legacy applications were reduced, and overall stability was improved.
Technical Benefits
- Resilient and high-performance systems
- Autoscaling on demand
- No technical bottlenecks
- Physically distributed systems with automatic failovers
- Rigorous and reliable security mechanisms
- Secure and efficient deployments and rollbacks
- Up-to-date technology stack
- Processes and applications that are as self-healing as possible
Business Benefits
- Transparent and predictable cost structure
- Scalable IT infrastructure for further growth
- New IT infrastructure meets ISO standards (processes and technology)
What Strong Ops GmbH offers:
- Design & Development of reliable, scalable and cost-efficient cloud architectures
- Optimization strategies for the entire Toolchain and IT processes
- SIEM, Logging, Alerting, and Backup solutions
- Proactive Monitoring and Incident Management
- Coaching and introduction of DevOps principles/strategies
- Technical Due Diligence
- Managed Cloud Infrastructure
By implementing private Kubernetes (K8s) multi-clusters, more efficient deployments were achieved and CI/CD best practices were introduced.
IT security and compliance with data protection guidelines, ISO standards and internal guidelines have been improved and increased as a result of the cloud migration.
During the 18-month implementation and migration phase, only a small amount of downtime was required for individual systems, which was rigorously planned and transparent across the specialist departments.
