Digital Metamorphosis of Bonnier
Bonnier AB is one of the largest Swedish media companies with 175 entities operating in 16 countries worldwide. The company is present in various media sectors, including press, television, radio, internet, and books.
In Poland, Bonnier is mainly known as the publisher of the business daily "Puls Biznesu," which is considered the most influential publication of its kind in the country.
Additionally, Bonnier owns Medicine Today Polska, the publisher of "Puls Medycyny."
Challenge:
Bonnier has decided to outsource the development, migration, and maintenance of its IT infrastructure. Tenesys specializes in managing IT environments and implementing DevOps culture. Our DevOps Engineer team was ready to provide Bonnier with the knowledge, experience, and support needed to achieve their business goals.
This solution brings additional knowledge and experience to the company while ensuring 24/7 maintenance without the need to build an expensive internal on-call system.
The task we were presented with was to analyze the current environment and modernize it to minimize risks, eliminate single points of failure (SPOF), and reduce potential system downtime due to the nature of the company’s operations.
Project Scope and Future Plans
We began by engaging with the technical team and analyzing the existing infrastructure, distributed across several locations, including ATMAN (virtual servers) and local infrastructure based on fibre optics.
The main objective was to get rid of legacy systems and enhance performance, stability, and scalability. The migration was carried out swiftly and without major issues, ensuring the effective security of the client’s systems. In addition to migrating from ATMAN to the OVHcloud, we modified the infrastructure, optimized the number of load balancers, and simplified communication paths. Our goal was to create the most efficient and concise infrastructure to provide the client with optimal working conditions.
The migration process was divided into several stages spanning several months. We initially built the infrastructure in the OVHcloud, selecting the appropriate cluster on which we deployed services. Modern virtualizers were installed, and we focused on deploying database clusters to test their performance. We placed significant emphasis on creating an effective connection between these two environments to speed up communication and minimize potential downtime.
During the process, we also migrated from Rancher to Kubernetes. Based on these actions, we established further steps with the CTO. We focused on introducing changes in infrastructure and security-related areas. The main goal of these changes was to increase environmental flexibility by facilitating expansion and ensuring excellent reliability. The outdated Xen cluster was moved to the more modern Proxmox platform. This cluster is regularly updated according to the established path, providing resource scalability, and all systems are kept up-to-date, contributing to a stable and secure environment.
As part of the resource migration to the OVHcloud, some Proxmox nodes were deployed between two OVHcloud data centres – in Warsaw and Linburg, Germany.
As a result, we implemented a private cloud based on dedicated Bonnier servers. The platform is continuously monitored and maintained with an SLA guarantee.
We support Bonnier’s team in selecting solutions and assist developers in streamlining application development processes and continuous software deployment. We utilize CI/CD processes and the GitOps approach. We collaborate with Bonnier’s developers to enhance the quality of their Git flow and support the implementation of the DevOps culture.
We are responsible for the development and stability of the infrastructure, continually monitoring its state. Additionally, we assist the client in negotiations with IT infrastructure vendors. Our service desk provides support for monitoring system alerts 24/7.
WE USED THE SERVICES:
Results
Currently, we manage the entire infrastructure, including dedicated servers, email services, firewalls, various types of databases, Kubernetes clusters, multiple application servers, and the network layer. Together with the client’s CSO, we work on raising platform security standards in accordance with established policies. We have also started preparing a monitoring panel for server performance and security, which will further support the development of this area.
The Bonnier project has taught us to react more quickly and secure access from the beginning of project implementation. Each service is duplicated on another node in the cluster, ensuring the continuity of client systems. We have developed a collaboration model allowing us to perform all tasks and respond to critical incidents efficiently.