Aspire Systems

The customer, a global network of professional services firm providing audit tax and advisory services, was looking to digitize their business operations. They were in need of a partner to do a technical proof of concept on Cortana analysis suite (CAS’s) data lake set of offerings. The customer's needs included bringing in data from multiple cloud tenants into a single location, running descriptive and predictive analytics on those data, establishing a regular schedule as well as data organization for the above, and the need for one consolidated version of data points.

The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for the FinTech sector, accelerating investments and technological progress. However, data and technology remain significant challenges, hindering further progress for FinTechs and their partnering traditional financial institutions. Among FinTechs globally, 81 percent have reported data to be their biggest technical challenge. These data issues are split between leveraging data for AI-ML (faced by 41 percent) and connecting to customer applications and data systems (faced by 40 percent). Other data issues faced by FinTechs include security (40 percent) and deployment in multiple clouds (39 percent). The consequences of these data issues include trouble innovating further due to a lack of clear picture about the type of products and services that customers require and about the businesses themselves. The inability to connect to customer applications directly impacts the user experience and the ability to offer their present products to the wider customer base. These issues also hinder securing partnerships with incumbent banks, and more seriously, regulatory compliance.

Metro Retail Stores Group, a leading operator of department stores and hypermarkets in the Visayas region, in the Philippines, was facing several challenges with its existing Oracle Retail Applications and EBS. The applications, which were deployed on cloud services such as Oracle Linux, IBM, and AWS cloud, lacked high availability, affecting the operational performance. The system also struggled to scale and handle traffic spikes and loads. The client needed to complete the migration before the expiration of on-premises licenses. The on-premises infrastructure lacked robust security, and the management of cost and resources was ineffective. Additionally, the client needed to upgrade the OS, database, and server versions along with the migration.

The client, a global Univar solution company specializing in chemical manufacturing, was facing several challenges with their Azure Cloud Services and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The issues included unavailability of application for 30 minutes during AKS update, AKS vulnerability, lack of support for on-premise systems, complex deployment in CPT and their PDMS application involving AI/ML, redundant storage accounts and application service plans, insufficient pods and inefficient pod deployments. The client also expressed a need for continuous support and monitoring of their AKS, and a desire to reduce their turnaround time by implementing Azure best practices.

Saudi Telecommunication Company (STC), a leading telecom distributor in the Middle East with over 6000 subscribers, was facing significant challenges due to its outdated monolith architecture-based application. The company was struggling with a lack of agility and flexibility, long development and test cycles, complex interdependencies, infrequent large releases, extensive manual testing, limited scalability and reliability, performance bottlenecks, and a lack of control of services. The outdated framework made it difficult for STC to adopt new frameworks and implement continuous deployment, which required the entire application to be redeployed. The company was striving to keep releases on track amidst these challenges.