powering eimskip's digital transformation: moving towards a modern azure hosting platform
website
#of employees
~ 1640
location
iceland
industry
transportation
services
freight forwarding, warehousing services
background
Eimskip, founded in 1914, is one of the oldest and most well-known enterprises in Iceland. It transports cargo by sea and land and provides extensive warehouse services. Business units within the Eimskip group include TVG-ZIMSEN, Sæferðir, Atlantic Trucking in Denmark, Tromsøterminalen in Norway and Cargocan in Canada.
The operation of the organization's web solutions is complicated due to the group's extensive operations. In conjunction with the redesign of the company's website, it was decided to reorganize, simplify, and modernize the system environment and migrate all web-based applications to Azure.
Vettvangur was brought in to design a new interface and upgrade the backend technology of the new website, while Well Advised was hired to manage the Azure part of the project.
challenge - a complex environment
In the first phase of the project, six of Eimskip’s websites where set to be migrated to Microsoft Azure. NAA and TVG-ZIMZEN's solutions were hosted in Vettvangur's Azure environments, while the main websites of Eimskip, www.eimskip.is and www.eimskip.com, as well as Seatours, Atlantic Trucking, and Cargocan's solutions were hosted on their own data center.
Some of the work called for organizing the project and coordinating with a number of vendors with which Eimskip already worked, such as Advania and Tietoevry, on the operation of respective environments.
Therefore, the scope of Well Advised's work was quite substantial, but in brief, it covered the following:
- Create a reliable, scalable, and modern Azure hosting environment where all Eimskip web solutions could be housed
- Configure monitoring and security to ensure the uptime of the environment, taking full advantage of the breadth of related solutions in Azure
- Maximize uptime of the solution and optimize performance.
- Implement DevOps procedures to support the ongoing development of solutions.
approach
Well Advised began its work of deploying databases, data warehouses, and web servers on Azure using Bicep IAC, which eliminates the need for manual installation of the system in favor of comprehensive documentation and environmental standardization via templates.
Implementing IaC (Infrastructure as a Code) helps prevent errors, streamlines environment upgrades as new technologies become available and simplifies infrastructure replication.
Future-proof with Azure DevOps
By incorporating DevOps practices into the software development process, Eimskip has become future-proof. In order to expedite front-end and back-end upgrades independently, automatic code releases (e.g. continuous integration/continuous deployment) are now implemented independently for each.
Several Azure-based tools were employed to ensure the safety of the implemented solutions.
Corporations like Eimskip frequently use multiple solutions from various vendors. In such complex environments it can be challenging to successfully fulfill all requirements. This ambitious project, where multiple parties collaborated during the design, planning and execution phases, resulted in a hosting solution that will ultimately facilitate future growth and provide lasting benefits to Eimskip's web solutions.
success
- Easier system management thanks to a standardized hosting environment.
- Azure DevOps will allow for the modern, efficient development of future digital solutions.
- Safer operations thanks to standardized security policies across solutions.
- Thorough cost analysis of services allows for more cost-effective operations.