A Retail Solutions Provider:
Driving Efficiency through Database Migration

A global retail intelligence company delivering behavior insights from 40 billion shopper visits each year, planned and updated the architecture of one of their flagship applications. A critical component of the migration included moving terabytes of data from Oracle Cloud to Google Cloud.

The retail solutions provider’s software portfolio leverages data gathered from more than 1.5 million Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in 185,000 brick-and-mortar retail stores globally. The sensors capture 40 billion shopper visits annually and track and protect billions of items each year. Their products are deployed in retail stores in 100 countries.

The Challenge

At the time, the retail solutions provider’s technology team was focused on numerous other initiatives already in the works. In addition to being resource-constrained, it also needed more Google architecture expertise devoted to the project. Google invited CI&T, its systems implementation strategic partner, to provide needed experts and map the device and traffic data migration logic. They were trying to combat sluggish experiences because of the massive amount of data collected. Even leveraging other cloud technologies, response times were still a problem to be solved.

The Solution

CI&T began migration planning, knowing that a move to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) would help enable the retail solutions provider to more effectively handle massive amounts of data, in addition to boosting systems speed, responsiveness, and performance.

One of the primary areas that CI&T considered in its migration plan was building a solution that would help reduce the threat of database system downtime. Such downtime is not only costly operationally, but also disruptive to customer experience. If a system goes down and a client isn’t able to access its data, the impact on business—and reputation—can be substantial.
 
IoT sensors built by the retail solutions provider include in-store beacons to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and Acousto-Magnetic (AM) hard tags and labels, and video capture devices. We aligned the existing data format from Oracle to be compatible with Google Cloud Platform functions, making data collection and analysis more efficient.

Moreover, although they were not experiencing severe systems performance issues with their existing on-premise solution, the retail solutions provider knew that it likely could have problems if it experienced a targeted growth of 30%. Strong security, an open-source-friendly cloud platform, highly scalable databases, and expert Customer Reliability Engineering are some of the key factors that led them to select GCP.

The Results

CI&T’s migration work and the use of GCP has helped the retail solutions provider more effectively:

●      Reduce cost
●      Improve system stability and scalability
●      Manage deep technological complexities
●      Increase overall agility and performance

The move also benefits their customers’ customers by enabling a more seamless and pleasant shopping experience from start to finish.

In 2019 and beyond, the retail solutions provider’s portfolio will continue to evolve and grow, especially with planned expansions across its entire solution suite. The future roadmap is to provide clients with as-a-service solutions that enable scale.