PROTORIA modernizes its IT infrastructure with Microsoft Azure and the guidance of Cloud Services.
PROTORIA, the retail service provider for Samsung in Ukraine, wanted to update its long-term strategy with cloud adoption plans. Cloud Services served as PROTORIA’s trusted advisor and migration partner in this endeavor. What began with a workshop grew to a three-year collaboration involving migrating PROTORIA’s infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. Now PROTORIA uses Azure, Office 365, and Microsoft Power BI every day and saves about 20 percent each year on costs.
Looking ahead to a digital future
PROTORIA operates more than retail 30 stores in Ukraine and actively develops an omnichannel customer experience. PROTORIA is also the country's retail service provider for the Samsung electronics chain. As part of managing its multichannel retail challenges, PROTORIA decided to review its digital assets and update its long-term strategy. One of the priorities PROTORIA's stakeholders identified during digital asset rationalization was modernization of the IT infrastructure and the main retail website to make adopting a digital customer experience fast and easy. PROTORIA connected with Cloud Services, a Microsoft partner based in Ukraine with an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider accreditation. Cloud Services’ managed service offerings help clients easily consume Azure and benefit from agile consumption-based models. Cloud Services proposed its Cloud Adoption Framework workshop (CAF), a four-hour session for business and tech leaders. ”During the CAF session, all CAF stages were worked out, and we understood the importance of setting up the right landing zone at the very beginning,” said Olga Khichii, COO of PROTORIA. “We agreed on commencing an infrastructure assessment, which helped us find relevant workloads to migrate to Microsoft Azure to get the most out of cloud benefits at the beginning of the cloud journey.” The session helped PROTORIA create a cloud adoption plan, and the infrastructure and security assessments determined migration scenarios and calculated costs. Additionally, Cloud Services indicated mission-critical priorities for the company for next three years: • Infrastructure as a Service, including support for cloud governance and cloud operations • Legacy web application modernization • High resiliency for web applications • Cost efficiency • Modernization of data analytics
Embracing the cloud and saving 20 percent each year During the first year, PROTORIA migrated its on-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) and relational database systems, and that resulted in infrastructure and administration savings. In the second year, PROTORIA migrated its website to Azure App Service and Docker containers to benefit from greater scalability, resiliency, and security. Finally, in the third year, PROTORIA optimized its analytics and data warehouse by migrating to Azure Synapse from on-premises SQL. PROTORIA also embraced Microsoft Power BI reporting for analytics, transitioning from Microsoft Excel and downloading ERP reports.
“We had a profound business plan for cloud adoption,” said Iryna Moiseyeva, CEO of Cloud Services. “During three years of collaboration, we migrated the customer’s infrastructure to Azure, modernized their web app and data warehouse, and set up analytics on Azure Synapse and Power BI.”
Today, PROTORIA uses Azure, Office 365, and Power BI on an everyday basis. Azure services include Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Lake, Azure Key Vault, Azure Application Insights, and Azure Log Analytics workspace. PROTORIA monitors store traffic, collects customer reviews, and analyzes sales and inventory. PROTORIA can look at planned and past periods for each product group and compare online sales to in-person sales. Azure Synapse and Power BI reports are generated and updated swiftly. The NPS report is updated every 15 minutes, receiving store reviews from buyers. Reports are available for headquarters workers as well as retail store staff. “The main benefits we got with moving to Azure,” said Khichii, “is not only cost savings, which is around 20 percent yearly, but continuous cloud operation support from our partner: a long-term plan that we execute step by step. That gives us understanding and opportunities to provide to our customers better service and a great experience both in offline and online shopping.”
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