In a cloud-first data strategy, it’s critical to have a database platform that’s a fully managed, distributed, cloud-native service. There are many advantages to a cloud-native database, but chief among them is the ability to scale rapidly. For example, Conrad Electronic, a European retailer, had originally created an online B2B marketplace for both its own and third-party products using an on-premises database in 2017.
But the rapid growth of the marketplace, which now hosts more than 7 million different products, made scaling to accommodate millions of products and customers difficult, and management had become extremely complex. Today, the company has more than 21 million customers around the globe and more than 2,500 employees, shipping more than 10 million packages to more than 150 countries annually. To gain scale and management simplicity, Conrad knew it needed to move to the cloud.
A cloud-native database can scale up, down, or out — essentially instantaneously — all while keeping applications running without a hiccup. There’s no need to overprovision a cloud-native database to account for sudden spikes in activity — their ability to dynamically scale means organizations will only pay for the resources they actually use at any point in time.
But scalability is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the advantages of a cloud-native database. A well-designed system, for example, can resize persistent disks, essentially eliminating the need for planned downtime. Plus, the resilience and scalability of the cloud enables near-perfect crunch time performance with minimal errors.
“Modern databases need to be scalable, resilient, mission critical with auto scaling,” says Frederic Favelin, technical director EMEA for partners at MongoDB. “This auto scaling needs to be horizontal or vertical, and you need to have management tools in order really to ensure the operation of your data platform.”
A cloud-native platform can also easily connect to powerful analytics, AI, and machine learning services within the public cloud. In fact, these connections typically require no specialized training to enable. As a result, organizations can easily analyze massive datasets that are multiple petabytes in size at previously unthinkable speeds, performing queries that would have taken months to complete in a traditional database in just minutes.
As a result, organizations transform the database from a source of cost, complexity, and risk into a platform for innovation. The cloud takes care of many of the underlying technical issues that consume so much of a company’s time and resources. With a cloud-native database platform, employees can focus on creating new opportunities for their organizations instead of maintaining an aging, complicated on-premises infrastructure.
“Legacy modernization is a strategic initiative that enables you to apply the latest innovations in development methodologies, architectural buttons, and technology to refresh your portfolio of legacy applications,” says Favelin. “This is much more than just lift and shift. Moving your existing application and databases to faster hardware or onto the cloud may get you slightly higher performances and marginally reduce costs. But you will fail to realize the transformational business agility, scale, or the development freedom that true legacy modernization brings.”
Legacy modernization is a strategic initiative that enables you to apply the latest innovations in development methodologies, architectural buttons, and technology to refresh your portfolio of legacy applications.
Conrad switched to MongoDB Atlas and a microservices architecture built in a Kubernetes cluster on Google Cloud. As a result, Conrad has achieved faster performance with an environment that can scale on a dime to meet exponential spikes in demand, an important capability for a company that is experiencing very rapid growth. And because MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud is so much easier to manage, Conrad’s development team saved 240 workdays, which means the team can devote more of their time to innovation and feature development instead of day-to-day data maintenance. Finally, MongoDB Atlas clusters provide high reliability with 99.995% uptime.
As a result, Conrad can grow its B2B marketplace as fast as required, while providing customers with fast, reliable service.
