Automation as the Key to Scalability for the HOGS aiTMS Platform
Hogs is an innovative and dynamically growing technology company that is a leader in its niche within the Central and Eastern European logistics market. The heart of all the company’s operations and its key product is its proprietary, advanced HOGS aiTMS platform.
The platform is used for comprehensive transport and freight management. Designed for maximum efficiency, HOGS aiTMS utilises advanced algorithms to optimise routes, manage fleets, and monitor shipments in real time. It is a crucial work tool for both the internal Hogs team and its clients, who can automate and streamline their logistics processes with its help.
The Challenge: Unscalable Infrastructure and Risk of Downtime
The decision to migrate from an on-premise infrastructure at OVHcloud to the AWS cloud was a strategic step aimed at solving fundamental problems that were hindering the development of the HOGS platform. The existing environment generated a number of technical and business issues:
Lack of Scalability: During periods of increased traffic, the application would become unavailable, leading to user frustration and business losses. The infrastructure was unable to flexibly adapt to the load.
Cost Inefficiency: The lack of scaling also applied to the database, which had significantly lower usage at night but generated constant, high costs.
Lack of Automation: The process of deploying new application versions was fully manual, which slowed down product development and increased the risk of human error.
Reactive Approach: The absence of 24/7 monitoring meant long response times to incidents. Instead of focusing on innovation, the HOGS team had to constantly “put out fires.”
The company needed a partner who could provide a stable, predictable, and fully automated environment.
A Partnership for Reliability: Choosing a Proven DevOps Expert
HOGS was looking for a partner with documented experience in complex cloud migrations and the implementation of modern DevOps practices. The choice fell on Tenesys as a team that could not only perform the migration but, above all, design and build a new, automated architecture from the ground up, ready for future growth, and cover it with professional maintenance.
Implementation and Migration Strategy: Four Steps to Automation
In response to the identified problems, we presented a clear plan for transforming the HOGS environment:
Step 1: Design and Migration Plan: We began by preparing a detailed proposal for a new infrastructure in AWS, based on containerization, along with a precise migration plan.
Step 2: Adaptation and Automation: We adapted the application to run in a Kubernetes (EKS) environment, creating dedicated Helm charts and building fully automated CI/CD processes in GitLab from scratch.
Step 3: Testing and Data Migration: After completing tests on the test cluster, we carried out a zero-downtime data migration from the MariaDB database on a virtual server to the fully managed AWS RDS service.
Step 4: Launch and Taking Responsibility: We launched the application in the new, production environment and immediately placed the entire infrastructure under proactive 24/7 monitoring and maintenance, taking full responsibility for its stability. The monitoring was based on Telegraf, Loki, and notifications from AWS Health sent via custom Lambdas.
The Transformation: Measurable Successes and a New Level of Quality
The implementation of the new architecture immediately brought measurable results. Manual and risky deployments were replaced by a fully automated CI/CD pipeline using ArgoCD, which allowed for an increased number of deployments. To ensure the system’s resilience against errors, as part of this process, all production changes go through automatic unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.
To solve the key scalability problem, the Kubernetes-based (EKS) infrastructure was enhanced with Karpenter. This allowed for dynamic resource autoscaling, enabling the system to automatically adapt to changing loads, thus maintaining high availability and resilience against sudden traffic spikes.
The implemented 24/7 monitoring became a key element guaranteeing high availability. Thanks to automated alerts and clearly defined procedures, the on-call team can quickly detect and resolve incidents, which drastically reduces response time and increases the system’s real availability.
Additionally, cost optimisation was implemented using AWS Lambda for automatic database scaling outside of business hours, which tangibly reduced costs. The result of the entire transformation is peace of mind, predictability, and full control over the environment.
Technology as a Guarantee of Growth: The New Reality for HOGS
Today, the HOGS platform operates in a new reality—one where traffic spikes are a natural part of business, not a source of concern about stability. HOGS has a solid, scalable technological foundation and a partner who ensures its reliability 24/7, allowing the company to confidently plan for further growth and strengthen its position as a leader in the logistics industry.
WE USED THE SERVICES:
“Working with Tenesys has been a valuable experience and an opportunity for us to grow. Thanks to their support, we have built a scalable environment for the HOGS platform, and in the process, we have gained a great deal of practical technological knowledge. This partnership has allowed us not only to pursue our growth strategy with greater peace of mind but also to expand our competencies and better prepare for future challenges.”
Paweł Pisarski, IT Systems Supervisor at HOGS