Construction and implementation of CMS without interruptions in the operation of the portal for 10 million users

Three separate content management systems had to be combined into one and integrated with a transactional system managed at the company’s headquarters abroad. The previous solution was not scalable to the huge number of customer users, so a new technological approach was necessary.

Client

Operator of a leading loyalty program, participants of which can collect points while shopping and then exchange for prizes. 10 million active cards in Poland, approx. 90 thousand new consumers monthly.

Need

Removal of serious problems with the performance of the current CMS (content management system) based on open source software and handling traffic generated by 10 million users. Elimination of interruptions and difficulties in accessing the website due to its overload. Creating the possibility of freely adding new elements to the portal.

Operational and budget constraints prevented the entire solution from being built at once. In consultation with the client’s IT department, it was decided to use the continuous development approach – the system was replaced piece by piece during regular development.

Solution

After taking over the tasks related to the maintenance, development, hosting and administration of the portal, Retailic developers diagnosed the lack of profitability of investments in subsequent reconstructions of the CMS used so far and recommended the construction of a new, dedicated system. The works were carried out in two ways. We created and implemented successively elements and functionalities of the new solution, at the same time taking care of the work without interruptions of the previous one. Within two years, the new CMS completely replaced the outdated system. During the works and during the final implementation, not even the shortest interruption in access to the portal occurred.

From the beginning of cooperation, the Retailic team took the initiative of technological changes by designing and developing a new content management system so that the decision to switch entirely to the solution being built was possible and as easy as possible – both technically and operationally. They anticipated our needs.

– recalls the project manager on the client’s side.

The results

With the implementation of the new portal, there were no more performance issues and interruptions. At the same time, we reduced the costs of IT infrastructure – Retailic administrators optimized the configuration of cloud hosting, i.e. server resources automatically adjust to the demand. CMS Retailic also turned out to be safer than the previous one. In the past, the customer’s internal security department often drew attention to gaps in the open source system, nowadays it is extremely rare.

About 10% of the relevant budget was used for direct costs – the remaining 90% was covered by running development costs. The entire process of development and replacement took place “in the background” – dealing with a constantly changing environment, but without downtime or interruptions.