China’s Retail Giant Unveils Massively Scalable, OpenStack-Based E-commerce and IaaS Platform
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Asia
Country
- China
Product
- Mirantis OpenStack
- UMCloud managed services
- Fuel software
Tech Stack
- OpenStack
- Ceph distributed storage
- KVM virtualization
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Sales & Marketing
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Retail Store Automation
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Shanghai-based Bailian Group is China’s largest retailer with more than 6000 department stores, supermarkets, and outlets across 25 cities and provinces. With over one billion annual store visits, the state-owned enterprise has grown to become the nation’s 84th largest company. However, like other fast growth geographies, China’s retail business continues to transform from brick and mortar to online commerce. Mobile phone users in China reached 1.3 billion in 2015, and mobile internet access soared to over 400 million users. This massive mobile and online growth, combined with China’s entrepreneurial culture, brought major changes to the retail industry. New competitors now offer mobile, social and celebrity-based sales models, while established companies launched multi-channel retail that merges e-commerce with in-store services.
The Challenge
Bailian Group, China's largest retailer, faced the challenge of transforming its business model from traditional brick and mortar to omni-channel business to keep up with the rapid growth of online commerce in China. The company's existing IT infrastructure was complex and not conducive to the fast-paced innovation required in the e-commerce sector. Low server utilization, long provisioning times, and high operating costs were impeding the company's growth in the omnichannel sales sector. The company needed a large-scale IT platform that would enable innovation and growth, with fast development, dynamic scaling, uncompromised availability, and low cost of operations.
The Solution
Bailian Group chose to implement an OpenStack-based cloud platform to drive its business transformation. The company selected Mirantis as the vendor to guide their OpenStack platform design and development, impressed by the OpenStack Foundation’s continuous innovation and rich feature releases, as well as Mirantis’ strong IaaS, PaaS, and CI/CD experience. Bailian Group also selected the OpenStack managed services of UMCloud, a joint venture between Mirantis and UCloud. The company built a 20-node MVP using the latest OpenStack distribution and Fuel software to deploy and manage all cloud components. The architecture included Ceph distributed storage, neutron and OVS software defined networking, KVM virtualization, F5 load balancers, and the StackLight logging, monitoring and alerting toolchain.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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