Pick n Pay moves its IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services

[SauRoNZA]

It does work for some entities.. and could possibly work for PnP as well... just from my experience many large corporates/enterprises realise at some point that a core of on-prem is actually cheaper than having it in the cloud for a variety of reasons.

Yeah every single use case will be different for sure.

I also very much doubt they've moved EVERYTHING to the cloud in the first place anyway.

The modern workforce being at home is further shifting that dynamic as well where in many cases cloud is actually more central to the user base and that somewhat counts for P&P which is quite distributed from an infrastructure point of view.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

My thoughts exactly.

If your offering is not hugely latency intolerant then choose the cheapest site that will provide the best experience. (in simplistic terms)

I would argue that running a local national ecommerce system is better to have the data centres locally. Lower latency is always a plus, especially for a retail ecommerce system. Cloud theory 101 says to always try and have your services as close to your customers as possible.

 

[ToxicBunny]

I would argue that running a local national ecommerce system is better to have the data centres locally. Lower latency is always a plus, especially for a retail ecommerce system. Cloud theory 101 says to always try and have your services as close to your customers as possible.

100% Cloud 101 says to keep your relevant services as close to your ecommerce customers as possible, that doesn't mean you need everything local, and in terms of an brick and mortar first entity, their ecommerce infrastructure probably accounts for 10% of their overall footprint.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

100% Cloud 101 says to keep your relevant services as close to your ecommerce customers as possible, that doesn't mean you need everything local, and in terms of an brick and mortar first entity, their ecommerce infrastructure probably accounts for 10% of their overall footprint.

From what I was working with, the entire Checkers ecommerce and 6060 systems was all in Ireland and Germany. They stated this was their main business and future. I was a bit shocked when I saw this, latency is very important for retail ecommerce, and knowing that Azure was 100% up and running in SA for years already. AWS was not yet in SA at the time.

 

[SauRoNZA]

From what I was working with, the entire Checkers ecommerce and 6060 systems was all in Ireland and Germany. They stated this was their main business and future. I was a bit shocked when I saw this, latency is very important for retail ecommerce, and knowing that Azure was 100% up and running in SA for years already. AWS was not yet in SA at the time.

And yet it being in Ireland hasn’t affected them in any way while saving them a fortune.

So were they wrong? Doesn’t seem like it was done “badly” at all.

 

[2026]

And yet it being in Ireland hasn’t affected them in any way while saving them a fortune.

So were they wrong? Doesn’t seem like it was done “badly” at all.

Not sure how someone could even conclude that it's done badly purely on the location it's deployed.

 

[ToxicBunny]

And yet it being in Ireland hasn’t affected them in any way while saving them a fortune.

So were they wrong? Doesn’t seem like it was done “badly” at all.

I would assume his version of badly is it doesn't use Azure therefore its bad...

 

[ToxicBunny]

Yeah every single use case will be different for sure.

I also very much doubt they've moved EVERYTHING to the cloud in the first place anyway.

The modern workforce being at home is further shifting that dynamic as well where in many cases cloud is actually more central to the user base and that somewhat counts for P&P which is quite distributed from an infrastructure point of view.

Generally agree, though from the gist of the article it seems to indicate that they've potentially moved their SAP system up into the cloud which would more than likely account for the vast majority of their IT estate if they've implemented it even vaguely correctly.

 

[Guest 290922]

Naked domain don't work, but with the www it works.

That's a bad mistake.

 

[SHL]

My brother in Christ, they have had a data center here since April 2020

My unholy lord almighty, you do know that Azure was 100% up in SA long before then, and that Checkers chose offshore AWS over local Azure when there was no local AWS.

But we are in 2022, the year of our Lord and Saviour, where there is a perfectly functioning AWS region in the country.

What exactly is your point here, where in the article did it state that they are looking for advice on this?

Jesus you are dense.

You guys are killing me here....

 

[Sapphiron]

And it being what it is there's nothing that stops you running 90% of your infrastructure in Ireland and 10% in SA for what really needs to be localised.

It would be very stupid to burn money and keep everything local just for the sake of it being local.

Same experience here. simply adding a Cloudflare service already bridges the gaps for lower transaction workloads like an on-line shop.

If you are running a workflow or collaboration tool, different story.

 

[Sapphiron]

That's a bad mistake.

The executives did not notice, because they us the google search engine as their address bar.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

Not sure how someone could even conclude that it's done badly purely on the location it's deployed.

Always deploy as close to your customers as possible. If it not deployed in the best location, it is part of being done badly. It is not the only thing that make me say that, to me, anything that is not done in the scientifically best way is done badly. I guess that is a bit harsh, but perfectionism is what I strive for.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

This MyBBer is stalking me.

 

[B-1]

You guys make me laugh. AWS has been in SA for a long time already first only for selected customers but its been open to everyone a few years already.
Besides that performance wise most services really don't have to be in country if you architect things properly.

 

[Vorastra]

Correction suggestion for the headline:
Pick n Pay migrates IT infrastructure to other people's computers

Yes, it's 2022.

 

[Vorastra]

Picture of one AWS centre's in cpt, but nothing on google maps, but did visit this one.

Bro, just drop co-ords next time.

 

[Vorastra]

You guys are killing me here....

Masha'Allah, brother.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

You guys make me laugh. AWS has been in SA for a long time already first only for selected customers but its been open to everyone a few years already.
Besides that performance wise most services really don't have to be in country if you architect things properly.

So how do you architect away higher latency? This is a retail chain ecommerce system, people are going to prefer the more snappy experience, especially important since the mobile apps are currently the most used channel, and the intense competition in this space.

 

[B-1]

So how do you architect away higher latency? This is a retail chain ecommerce system, people are going to prefer the more snappy experience, especially important since the mobile apps are currently the most used channel, and the intense competition in this space.

You use local caching, asynchronous loading etc and most people won't notice <200ms response times for the parts you cannot cache.