Uncovering Success Stories: Explore Cloud-Native Case Studies

Cloud-native is the concept of leveraging cloud computing technologies to deliver applications faster and more efficiently. It's important because it helps us get that extra hour of sleep we all need!

Cloud-native is a term used to refer to applications that are built to take advantage of cloud technologies and are designed to be highly scalable, resilient, and agile. It is becoming increasingly important for businesses to embrace cloud-native technologies, as they enable organizations to lower costs, increase agility, and gain better insights from their data.

The purpose of this article is to explore how cloud-native technologies have enabled businesses to realize measurable benefits such as cost savings, improved agility, and access to valuable insights from data.

Financial Services Sector: Capital One

Capital One is a financial institution based in the United States that provides a range of banking and financial services to consumers and businesses.

Capital One's Cloud native journey & Challenges

• Capital One began its cloud-native journey in 2014 with the goal of improving its agility and ability to innovate.
• One of the main challenges they faced was transitioning from a traditional, monolithic architecture to a microservices-based architecture that could support continuous deployment and delivery.
• They also had to ensure security and compliance in a highly regulated industry.

Cloud-native technologies and practices they implemented:

• Capital One adopted a variety of cloud-native technologies and practices, including containerization with Docker and Kubernetes for orchestration, serverless computing with AWS Lambda, and continuous integration and delivery with Jenkins and Spinnaker.
• They also implemented a DevOps culture and a "fail-fast" approach to innovation.

Results:

• Capital One was able to reduce its time to market for new features and products from months to weeks, and even days in some cases.
• They achieved greater resiliency and scalability, enabling them to handle spikes in demand and avoid downtime.
• The company also saw significant cost savings through the use of cloud infrastructure and automation.
• By embracing a cloud-native mindset, Capital One was able to foster a culture of innovation and experimentation, resulting in the creation of new products and services that better serve their customers.

Retail, Ecommerce: Elkj?p

Elkj?p is the largest electronics retailer in the Nordics with over 400 retail locations, a large e-commerce presence, and 12,000 employees. Elkj?p introduced microservices to increase development velocity and provide shared functionality between systems. However, as the number of microservices grew, a new approach was needed.

Cloud-native journey and challenges:

• Initially, Elkj?p hosted its microservices in individual Azure Web Apps. As the environment grew, the company needed a modern, enterprise-ready microservices hosting platform that would work from day one while providing visibility into service health and encrypting all service-to-service communication.
• The company was also about to start an extensive project called “Next-Generation Retail” that would put even more pressure on their microservices.

Cloud-native technologies and practices implemented:

• Elkj?p chose Linkerd, the lightweight, ultra-fast CNCF service mesh, to gain visibility into service health and encrypt all service-to-service communication.
• Linkerd injects an ultra-lightweight “micro-proxy” as a sidecar for each application. The proxy can offload many cross-cutting concerns such as end-to-end encryption, provide valuable metrics, and give insight into service-to-service communication.
• Elkj?p also dockerized and deployed applications onto Kubernetes.

Results and benefits achieved:

• Elkj?p's platform now hosts more than two hundred microservices, all tuned for the increased requirements of a 24/7 modernized and seamless purchasing experience for Elkj?p’s customers, whatever channel they’re on—online, mobile, or in-store.
• With Linkerd , Elkj?p reduced hosting costs by 70-80% and gained the ability to create architecture changes with a smaller infrastructure footprint. Today, Elkj?p trusts Linkerd to help them keep the company running and help their customers enjoy amazing technology.

Conclusion:

Elkj?p's cloud-native journey enabled the company to provide a modernized and seamless purchasing experience for customers across all channels. With Linkerd, the company was able to achieve significant cost savings and create architecture changes with a smaller infrastructure footprint.

Telecommunications : Vodafone

Vodafone is a global telecommunications company that provides technology services to both consumers and businesses. The company launched a new digital strategy in 2016 with the goal of delivering the best customer experience in each of its 25 different markets.

Cloud-Native Journey

Vodafone's traditional software was heavily customized and not particularly automated. It had legacy ties to particular hardware, virtualization, or licensing. This lack of efficiency made it difficult for Vodafone to achieve its digital strategy goals.

Cloud-Native Technologies and Practices

• To meet their digital strategy goals, Vodafone implemented cloud-native software and culture.
• They chose Kubernetes as their orchestration platform to best enable local markets to share assets. Kubernetes allowed Vodafone to easily orchestrate their lightweight container platform from a single location, enabling them to compete in the 5G workspace and the IoT.

Results and Benefits

• The biggest change has been that Vodafone has gone from being 97% outsourced in terms of the skills needed to build software to 95% in-house.
• The company has increased its cadence for time to market, with tens of releases a day.
• Additionally, the sales and marketing KPIs that sit underneath customer satisfaction have significantly improved. Vodafone has increased their online sales and made all their digital marketing more data-driven.

Lessons Learned

Overall, the case studies demonstrate that embracing a cloud-native mindset and leveraging cloud-native technologies and practices can enable organizations to achieve significant benefits in terms of scalability, agility, resilience, and cost savings.

Culture Shift and Organizational Buy-in

All three companies recognized the importance of a culture shift towards DevOps practices and organizational buy-in to fully realize the benefits of cloud-native technologies.

Embrace cloud-native technologies to achieve business goals

These case studies demonstrate that cloud-native technologies can help organizations achieve their business goals, such as increasing agility, reducing costs, and improving the customer experience.

Microservices architecture is key to achieving cloud-native benefits

All three case studies highlight the importance of using a microservices architecture to achieve cloud-native benefits, such as faster time to market, greater resiliency, and scalability.

Importance of Visibility and Monitoring

Elkj?p and Vodafone both highlighted the importance of visibility and monitoring in managing and troubleshooting their microservices-based architectures. Tools like Linkerd enabled Elkj?p to gain visibility into service health and encrypt all service-to-service communication, while Vodafone leveraged Kubernetes to monitor and manage their containerized infrastructure.

DevOps culture and continuous delivery are critical for success

Capital One and Elkj?p both emphasize the importance of adopting a DevOps culture and continuous delivery practices to support a cloud-native approach.

If you have any cloud-native success stories or questions, please feel free to share them in the comments section below. I would love to hear about your experiences and help answer any questions you may have. Additionally, you can reach out to me directly. Let's continue the conversation and share our knowledge and experiences to help each other succeed in the cloud-native world.