Stylework’s Efficiency and Cost Reduction Solutions, provided by Cloud 9

Stylework is a leading coworking aggregator with a vision to empower the global work lifestyle. It offers a vast network of over 3000 flexible and customizable coworking spaces tailored to meet the needs of enterprises and individuals. With services that include hassle-free setup, amenities like recreational areas and coffee lounges, and flexible membership plans, Stylework ensures a seamless and productive workspace experience.

Challenge 

At the start of the project, Stylework faced several significant challenges:

• Operational Issues: The existing production workload on AWS was plagued by operational inefficiencies, leading to frequent disruptions and management difficulties.
• Rising Costs: The costs associated with their current AWS setup were steadily increasing, straining the company’s budget and impacting overall profitability.
• Performance Bottlenecks: The performance of their applications was hindered by bottlenecks, resulting in slower response times and a less efficient user experience.
• Security Concerns: Ensuring the security of their data and applications was becoming increasingly challenging, raising concerns among the higher management about potential vulnerabilities.

In response to these challenges, Stylework aimed to explore and deploy their solutions on Azure, leveraging Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) to rearchitect their infrastructure. However, they lacked resources and bandwidth to streamline the IT part of their business.

Solution 

Cloud 9 devised a comprehensive solution to address Stylework’s challenges through a systematic and aligned approach. Here’s how we solved the problem:

• Thorough Assessment: We began with a detailed assessment of Stylework’s existing AWS infrastructure and its specific challenges. This assessment helped identify the critical pain points, including operational inefficiencies, rising costs, performance bottlenecks, and security vulnerabilities.
• Proposed Solution: Based on the assessment, we proposed leveraging a suite of Azure technologies to rearchitect Stylework’s infrastructure. The key components of the solution included:
• Azure DevOps: Implementing Azure DevOps for streamlined and efficient development and deployment processes. This toolset provided integrated tools for managing the entire application lifecycle, from planning and development to testing and deployment.
• AKS Cluster Deployments: Deploying Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) clusters to manage Stylework’s microservices architecture. AKS offered optimal scalability options, enabling the seamless scaling of applications based on demand while improving performance and resource utilization.
• NoSQL Databases: Leveraging NoSQL databases like Cosmos DB and MongoDB for their workload. These databases provided flexible and scalable data storage solutions, enhancing the performance and reliability of data operations.
• Azure Key Vault: Implementing Azure Key Vault to manage secrets and ensure the security of sensitive information. Key Vault helped secure access to keys, passwords, certificates, and other secrets, addressing security concerns.
• Deployment Strategy: We recommended and assisted in the deployment of Stylework’s applications across different environments, ensuring a smooth transition and minimal downtime. The environments included:
• Development and Testing (DevTest): Creating a DevTest environment to allow developers to test new features and updates in a controlled setting before moving to production.
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Setting up a UAT environment to enable end-users and stakeholders to validate the functionality and performance of the applications before final deployment.
• Production: Deploying the fully tested and validated applications to the production environment, ensuring that all components were optimized for performance, scalability, and security.

Results

The implementation of Cloud 9’s solution yielded significant and measurable business outcomes for Stylework:

• Reduced Operational Costs: By migrating to Azure and optimizing their infrastructure with AKS and NoSQL databases, Stylework achieved a 12% reduction in operational costs. This cost-saving was a direct result of more efficient resource utilization and the elimination of redundant processes.
• Improved Operational Management: Leveraging Azure DevOps for Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) and Infrastructure as Code (IaaC) deployments streamlined Stylework’s operational management. Automating deployment processes and better infrastructure management reduced the workload on their IT teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives. This led to a substantial improvement in overall operational efficiency.
• Enhanced Performance and Scalability: Using AKS clusters and scalable NoSQL databases significantly improved the performance and scalability of Stylework’s applications. This ensured a smoother user experience and supported the company’s growth by accommodating increasing workloads without performance degradation.
• Strengthened Security: Implementing Azure Key Vault for secret management enhanced the security of sensitive information, addressing one of the primary concerns of Stylework’s higher management. This improvement reduced the risk of security breaches and reinforced the company’s trustworthiness in handling critical data.