Serverless Migration and Team Augmentation – PLT

Client

PrettyLittleThing

Country

United Kingdom

Status

2019 - Active

The Client

PLT, a growing online fashion retailer, faced the challenge of scaling its user base and reducing operational costs. The existing Magento system’s scalability constraints hindered their progress.

Tech Stack

Team Involved

Backe-End Developer

UI/UX Designer

QA Engineer

DevOps developer

Challenge

Pretty Little Thing confronted several hurdles, with their existing system’s scalability limitations impeding their progress. The challenges are:

Scaling User Base

PLT needed to scale its user base and accommodate increasing customer demands. The existing Magento system’s scalability constraints posed a challenge in meeting these requirements.

Sourcing Skilled Talent

Finding high-skilled, cost-effective talent proved to be a substantial challenge for PLT. Rigorous screening processes and aggressive recruitment strategies were necessary to augment their resources.

Solution

To overcome the challenges, PLT implemented a solution focused on efficient CI/CD processes and the adoption of serverless microservices on AWS. The key components of the solution included:

Migration to Serverless Microservices

The application was transformed from a monolithic structure in Magento to a set of serverless microservices on AWS. This leaner architecture allowed for improved scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.

Technology Stack

The redesigned architecture utilized AWS Lambda, Amazon Dynamo DB, SQS, API Gateway, Node.js, ReactJS, and React-Native to build the serverless microservices, ensuring high performance and efficient management.

Resource Augmentation and Mentorship

Top-tier resources were assigned to PLT to provide continuous mentorship, ensuring high-quality service delivery and efficient management of the eCommerce solution.

Impact

The migration and redesign of PLT’s application brought about a series of substantial impacts.

Improved Performance and Resilience

The adoption of serverless microservices improved application performance and resilience, enabling PLT to handle increased user demand and scale their operations effectively.

Cost Reduction

The serverless microservice model reduced costs by 60% compared to the previous VPS infrastructure. This cost reduction was achieved through efficient resource utilization and pay-as-you-go pricing models provided by AWS.

Better Code and Application Management

The redesigned architecture facilitated better code and application management, allowing for faster development cycles, easier maintenance, and seamless integration of new features and updates.

Achieved Business Growth

With the help of the serverless microservices solution, PLT achieved significant business growth, reaching 600,000 daily customers and £1.5M in daily revenue. The scalability and efficiency of the solution supported the company’s expansion goals.

Cost-Effective Resource Augmentation

The extended team, including team leads, developers, DevOps, QA, and an account manager, seamlessly integrated with the on-shore teams. This cost-effective resource augmentation approach reduced costs while delivering the desired outcomes.