SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As the largest
logistics enterprise in Argentina,
Andreani Logistics Group is a leader in advanced IT planning,
construction concepts, and digital systems. However, the company's
growth since it was founded in 1945 has outpaced the capabilities
of its legacy IT system. Fortunately, a well-planned cloud solution
offered Andreani a way out.
Since its beginnings over 70 years ago, Andreani has expanded
into four main businesses covering Argentina and Brazil: Logistics, pharmaceuticals, postal
logistics, and real estate. Combined, the resulting service growth
caused infrastructural pressures that couldn't be solved by the
usual responses: Blind investment and extensive IT
construction.
Internet + logistics
In logistics, Andreani is active in the B2B space, providing
warehousing and distribution solutions as part of an end-to-end
logistics package. Now, it has expanded into the digital realm of
eCommerce and stepped up investment in technologies that enhance
transaction capabilities.
When Andreani's eCommerce platform went live, it became
Argentina's first platform of its
type that could provide customers with end-to-end solutions that
featured management and control systems for services like product
warehousing, packaging, supplier management, and door-to-door
delivery.
Andreani now runs multiple branches across Argentina, forming a unified order
distribution network supported by a dedicated team that develops
online sales solutions and tools to continually optimize processes,
warehousing, goods preparation, delivery, and shipment
tracking.
Its service scope provides subject matter experts to
multinational groups, plus complete and customized eCommerce
service solutions that help these groups promote products on their
own platforms.
Andreani's customers run into the thousands and include big
names like Santander Bank and
Hewlett-Packard.
However, its IT capabilities were beginning to let it down.
Four service bottlenecks
First, Andreani manages almost all of its servers on cloud
platforms or in hosting mode. At present, four carriers provide
services for Andreani's data centers. So, it lacks a unified
platform for centralized O&M.
Second, after launching its eCommerce platform, the increasing
traffic and lack of scalability in its system architecture cannot
flexibly allocate resources to match needs. Users frequently
struggle to log into the platform during peak hours, user
experience is poor, and Disaster Recovery (DR) is non-existent.
Third, logistics real-time requirements need large dedicated
networks that remain stable. However, the cloud service provider of
Andreani's SAP ERP system didn't build any local nodes, increasing
network delay for application systems and causing user experience
to deteriorate.
Fourth, Andreani's core warehousing system uses VMware's Veeam
solution for remote DR. But the DR center's construction costs are
high and the center doesn't guarantee that services aren't
interrupted.
Telefónica Open Cloud to the rescue
In October 2016, Huawei and
Telefónica Business Solutions jointly released Open Cloud and Cloud
Server services in Chile,
Brazil, and Mexico - a
partner collaboration to cloudify Andreani's traditional IT
enterprises.
In addition to technical support for both Open Cloud and Cloud
Server, Huawei's solutions cover software and hardware, including
servers, storage, networks, and cloud operating systems.
To address Andreani's four business requirements, Telefónica
developed four specific solutions for planning, rectification, and
follow-up O&M based on the carrier's two cloud solutions:
O&M:
Formulate a cloudification plan to migrate existing application
systems to Telefónica Open Cloud and manage scattered data centers
on a unified O&M platform.
Infrastructure:
Deploy cloud servers and elastic, scalable services to cloudify
the IT infrastructure of Andreani's eCommerce platform, enabling
the platform to easily scale resources up or down.
User experience:
Use Telefónica's network resources and geographical advantages
to improve user experience of cloud applications, and build local
nodes to prevent network delays from affecting Andreani's service
applications like SAP DEV and QAS.
DR:
Implement a PAYU-based DR solution for core warehousing that's
stable and cost-effective.
Three-step plan for getting smart
Telefónica and Huawei jointly launched an Open Cloud public
cloud service to fulfill Andreani's business requirements, and then
created the following customized three-step cloudification plan:
Cloudify eCommerce, reduce SAP network delays, and cloudify the DR
system for core warehousing.
Currently, the project is in the second phase.
So far, Andreani can centrally manage resources on heterogeneous
cloud platforms, thus improving O&M efficiency. By setting up
and optimizing a complete set of backup and DR solutions including
migration, coupled with high-performance and reliable solutions,
Andreani has reduced its DR TCO.
Telefónica Open Cloud has paved the way for Andreani to evolve
its service offerings to the IoT, robotics, and process
optimization, accelerating the Argentine company's digital
transformation into a smart logistics leader.
To date, 197 companies on the Fortune Global 500 list and 45 of
the top 100 enterprises have chosen Huawei as their partner for
digital transformation. To know more about Huawei helping
enterprises achieve digital transformation, please visit
http://e.huawei.com/topic/leading-new-ict-en/index.html?utm_campaign=lni17_minisiteen&utm_medium=display&utm_source=all&source=eebghq175148n