Aspire Systems

The customer was looking to digitize their business operations. As a part of that, they were in need of a partner to do a technical proof of concept on Cortana analysis suite (CAS’s) data lake set of offerings. Some of the needs were:Bring in data from multiple cloud tenants into a single locationRun Descriptive and Predictive Analytics on those dataEstablish a regular schedule as well as data organization for the aboveNeed for one consolidated version of data points

Among FinTechs globally, 81 percent have reported data to be their biggest technical challenge. These data issues are split between leveraging data for AI-ML (faced by 41 percent) and connecting to customer applications and data systems (faced by 40 percent). More data issues faced by FinTechs are security (40 percent) and deployment in multiple clouds (39 percent).The consequences of data issues faced in leveraging data for AI in deriving valuable insights is trouble faced to innovate further due to a lack of clear picture about the type of products and services that customers require and about the businesses themselves. The lack of ability to connect to customer applications directly impacts the user experience and the ability to offer their present products to the wider customer base.Also, the consequences include the inability to secure partnerships with incumbent banks, and the more serious one of a lack of regulatory compliance. The above two consequences could bring into question the aspect of survivability and data issues at the root of them should be solved before they take effect.

The client had implemented Oracle Retail Applications for business activities such as merchandising, planning, stores, and warehouse management. Financial requirements were taken care of by EBS. The solutions were deployed on cloud services such as Oracle Linux, IBM, and AWS cloud.The challenges are s follows:Lack of high availability for applications and databases, which affected the operational performanceDifficulty to scale and handle traffic spikes and loadsNeed to complete migration before the expiration of on-premises licensesLack of robust security with on-premises infrastructureIneffective management of cost and resourcesUpgradation of OS, database, and server versions along with migration

The client was using a monolith architecture-based application and suffered from a lack of agility with complex interdependencies. They had been practicing extensive manual testing and strived to keep release on track. With their outdated framework, it became a huge task to adopt a new framework and to implement continuous deployment which required the entire application to be redeployed.

The client needed help with Azure Cloud Services and also requested continuous support and monitoring of their Azure Kubernetes Service. The client faced several issues including unavailability of application for 30 minutes during AKS update and also required a solution to fix their AKS vulnerability. They also wished to reduce their turnaround time by implementing Azure best practices.The other issues they faced included lack of support for on-premise systems, complex deployment in CPT and their PDMS application involving AI/ML, redundant storage accounts and application service plans, not enough pods available, and inefficient pod deployments.