Large Portuguese Retailer adopts solution provided by Cloud365 to improve by 650% Application performance to China

When our client, a major Portuguese retailer, faced serious connectivity challenges with suppliers and staff in China, Cloud365 stepped in with a game-changing solution. From strict government regulations to frustratingly high latency, their global operations were hitting some serious roadblocks. But with Cloud365 and our partner Aryaka Networks, we turned things around in record time — improving application performance by 650%!

Challenges

In the globalized business world we live in, ensuring smooth and efficient operations across different geographies can be challenging. For this large Portuguese retailer, which has part of its supply chain and some staff members located in China, connectivity to China was becoming a major bottleneck in business operations. The company faced multiple issues:

• Strict Chinese government regulations - The Chinese government imposes strict regulations on inbound and outbound internet traffic, impacting access to IT services hosted out of China.
• High latency - The latency between Portugal and China was excessively high, leading to major slowdowns, application instability and disrupted workflows.
• Suppliers’ challenges - Suppliers were facing very slow and instable access to the Web based Supplier Portal, a critical component for customer’s supply chain.
• Internal Users’ challenges - Staff members operating from China faced similar challenges concerning access to internal applications over a VPN Client solution, whose concentrator is in Portugal. This was leading to users’ frustration and reducing productivity.

The Cloud365 Approach and Solution

Cloud365, in collaboration with the long-time partner Aryaka Networks, addressed the customer's connectivity challenges, by implementing two key solutions to optimize both performance and application stability:

• Aryaka SmartCDN - A dynamic content delivery network (CDN) solution to speed up access to the web-based Supplier Portal hosted in Portugal, ensuring that the Retailer’s suppliers in China could seamlessly interact with the portal in real time, without any latency.
• Aryaka SmartSecure VPN Accelerate - A VPN Client acceleration solution designed to optimize the performance of internal applications accessed via VPN from China. This enabled employees in the country to quickly and securely access critical business applications, either from their offices or remotely.

Cloud365 was selected for the deep expertise in global connectivity and ability to offer a secure and government-compliant service for operations in China. Aryaka’s global SD-WAN and CDN technology was an ideal fit, providing a solution tailored to the client’s specific challenges in terms of latency, bandwidth, and security.

The implementation was seamless and fast. Since no additional hardware or software was required, both solutions were up and running within 2 hours.

For both Suppliers and internal Users, the solution provides reliable access to relevant applications hosted in Portugal, from anywhere in Continental China, using just any local Internet service.

Cloud365 worked closely with the customer during and after the implementation. Cloud365 team worked with the client to fine-tune network configurations and to ensure maximum efficiency from the solutions provided.

Results

The results of the implementation were both immediate and impactful:

Improved supplier access - The SmartCDN solution significantly enhanced the performance of the Supplier Portal, allowing suppliers across China to access the platform without delays, greatly improving the efficiency of the supply chain.

Increased employee productivity - Using Aryaka's SmartSecure VPN Accelerate solution, employees in China can now access applications quickly and efficiently, from both their offices and remote locations, in compliance with government regulations on Internet traffic.

Latency reduction - Application response time between Portugal and China dropped from 6 seconds to an impressive 0.8 seconds, dramatically improving the overall user experience (7,5 times less application latency, or a 650% improvement!).

Cost savings - The new solution allowed the client to discontinue expensive and unnecessary internet infrastructure that was previously in use, resulting in direct cost savings. The solution offered better performance at a reduced operational cost.

With Cloud365’s continued support, the client can now focus on its core business objectives, knowing that its network infrastructure is secure, reliable, and optimized for global operations.

For more information on how Cloud365 can also help optimize your global network infrastructure, contact us today.