the domino's effect: leveraging azure for scalability, efficiency - and 40% annual savings
website
#of employees
> 600
location
iceland
industry
fast food
services
pizza baking & delivery
background
Domino's in Iceland has worked with Vettvangur and Well Advised to develop their digital solutions and system operations over the past few years. This collaboration has led to great success, solidifying Domino's position as a technology leader not only in the fast food sector but also more broadly.
The company has skillfully harnessed digital technology to deliver outstanding services through digital channels. This success is well-recognized, as evidenced by 14 nominations and 5 wins at the Icelandic Web Awards.
Furthermore, Domino's is leading the way in leveraging artificial intelligence to increase shopping cart value and enhance the user experience, keeping them at the cutting edge of innovation.
challenge
Domino's embarked on its cloud journey with Microsoft Azure five years ago. During this period, Azure's solutions have evolved significantly, introducing many innovations that further reduce costs and enhance results within the Azure cloud.
Consequently, it was time to reassess Domino's hosting options holistically and explore ways to achieve even better outcomes with Azure.
Adapting to fluctuating computing power needs
The most vital Azure service that Domino's utilizes is a database service, installed with pre-determined power (provisioned Database Transaction Units, DTUs).
It's designed to handle the workload efficiently during peak hours.
However, Domino's has extremely volatile needs as regards to performance, especially during significant events like the Megaweek and Tuesday specials, as well as on weekends when massive traffic spikes occur.
In contrast, during slower periods, the data flow is considerably more modest and all points of sale are closed from 01:00 to 11:00 in the morning.
approach
After researching and comparing options, the conclusion was that there was an ideal opportunity to implement a new serverless database service from Azure (e. Azure SQL Database serverless), where power and performance are scaled up and down automatically.
Introduced by Azure in the fall of 2019, Azure SQL Database Serverless is a service that maximizes performance and minimizes costs for databases with highly volatile and unpredictable loads. This approach allows processing capacity to scale swiftly during peak times and scale back down when demand lessens. With this service, you pay only for the power you use, calculated on a second-by-second basis. Serverless data services are consistently up-to-date and instantly accessible when required.
Configuring development databases
Several development databases were in operation at various levels of usage. The demands on these were more modest, making it an ideal opportunity to consolidate the power reserved for them into one centralized location, using what's known as the "SQL Database Elastic Pool."
Upgrade to a new Azure App Service - big savings
The websites dominos.is and api.dominos.is were running on an older version of Azure App Service.
By updating to a newer version, it became possible to not only enhance the power allocated to the web solutions but also to cut costs significantly, with a commitment to Microsoft for multiple years leading to a discount of around 40%.
This approach was also applied to the "SQL Database Elastic Pool," resulting in a further ~40% discount, in addition to the efficiency of sharing the compute power for the development databases.
After summing up the combined measures, we found an annual savings of millions in ISK, with certain hosting services experiencing a notable reduction of 40%.
success
- Serverless database service - enables fast performance scaling based on load
- Azure App Service updated and service path optimized - increased power for Domino's solutions and annual savings of 40%
- Development databases reconfigured - processing capacity consolidated and optimized resulting in savings of 40% per year