Leveraging DevOps Transformation for Superior Retail Insight and Data Engineering in the Beverage Industry
Summary
A leading beverage company aimed to enhance its DevOps practices for its Retail Management Services (RMS) platform. Fractal’s implementation of a comprehensive DevOps strategy, including a DevOps maturity assessment, federated CI/CD pipelines, standardized templates, and AWS-based Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, significantly improved operational efficiency and data management capabilities. The project, which was entirely built on AWS Cloud, enabled the client to analyze and understand market trends for their beverage products.
Business challenge
The company aimed to launch a Retail Management Services platform capable of analyzing vendor data. However, it faced several hurdles. Its current DevOps methods failed to ensure data quality, build pipelines, and manage data catalogs. An old system was in place, which proved insufficient for the advanced requirements of its AWS Redshift data warehouse and the analytics directed to its RMS Data Mart.
A comprehensive evaluation and enhancement of the platform’s DevOps practices were necessary.
Solution / Approach
Our approach to enhancing the client’s DevOps and data engineering capabilities involved designing and implementing federated CI/CD pipelines for the RMS Data Mart. This ensured efficient and reliable deployment processes.
DevOps Maturity Assessment
We evaluated to assess the current state of the client’s DevOps practices, identifying automation gaps, pipeline inefficiencies, and areas needing standardization. Recommendations included advancing DevSecOps, adopting sprint planning, establishing platform engineering teams, and improving Git strategy and CI/CD pipelines.
Key DevOps components of the solution
Fractal leveraged various AWS services and tools to ensure robust, efficient, and scalable infrastructure management:
- AWS CodeCommit: Utilized Git versioning, ensuring reliable and scalable version control with separate repositories for different components.
- AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild: Automated the deployment process, facilitating seamless, continuous delivery from development to production. PR-based changes triggered pipelines that installed dependencies, linted PySpark and Python scripts, performed Checkov scans on Terraform modules, and deployed resources upon successful builds.
- Terraform for IaC: Used to provision AWS resources, including Glue jobs, Step Functions, and Lambda functions, ensuring consistent, repeatable deployments and simplified resource management.
- AWS Glue, Step Functions, and Lambda: Designed ETL logic and data pipelines for efficient data processing, with Step Functions orchestrating complex workflows.
- IAM Roles and Policies: Implemented well-defined roles and policies for robust security and access management.
- AWS Redshift: Used for managing data warehousing.
Results
The implementation led to the successful establishment of the RMS Data Mart on AWS, delivering several DevOps benefits:
- Increased Deployment Velocity: Automated CI/CD pipelines accelerated deployments and reduced time-to-market.
- Enhanced Reliability and Stability: Continuous monitoring and real-time visibility ensured quick issue resolution.
- Improved Security Posture: Integrated security checks within CI/CD pipelines mitigated security risks.
- Scalability and Flexibility: Seamless scaling with Terraform-based IaC.
- Error Prevention and Consistency: PR-based reviews and automated deployments minimized risks of misconfigurations.
- Cost Efficiency: Optimized resource management and automated processes resulted in significant cost savings.
The project achieved significant benefits, including a 20% improvement in operational efficiency through a DevOps maturity assessment and process changes, reducing review and build times. Using AWS Cloud-based Infrastructure as Code (IaC), it provided scalable and reliable infrastructure management. This enhanced security, compliance, and performance while reducing costs and speeding up time to market. Terraform ensured consistent and repeatable deployments, and the project provided effective data analysis capabilities.
Conclusion
Fractal’s comprehensive DevOps strategy, featuring a DevOps maturity assessment, federated CI/CD pipelines, standardized templates, AWS-based infrastructure management, and extensive use of Terraform for IaC, transformed the beverage company’s RMS platform. It delivered enhanced data analytics and operational efficiencies, reduced costs, and accelerated time to market.