AWS Managed Services for Software Optimization

Good software adapts to the requirements of a company - and not vice versa. Lobster has been following this premise since 2002. With easy-to-use solutions for complex issues, Lobster offers customers three software-based integration products and one platform solution:

• "Lobster_data" standard software for data and systems integration.
• "Lobster_pro" for digitalisation and automation of business processes
• "Lobster_pim" for smooth product communication
• The "logistics.cloud" portal as a vertical cloud solution for the logistics industry

Lobster's software products follow the no-code philosophy: individual for each customer, yet easy to understand, quickly integrated and configurable without programming. The products build on each other in terms of content and systematically and offer Lobster customers a complete end-to-end online fulfilment process.

Lobster DATA GmbH's software products were initially provided to customers as an on-premise solution on their own server or in Lobster's own data centre. In many cases, a technician was also required to commission the software at the customer's site, perform the necessary on-site configurations and oversee the software go-live.

For customers and for Lobster itself, this was a time-consuming and resource-intensive process to get the software into a usable state.

To provide customers with a better user experience and accelerate the optimization of Lobster's internal processes, a cloud migration was evaluated in advance.Lobster DATA GmbH's core competencies lie in software development and not in processes for internal IT, so our services were integrated into the project as a certified AWS Advanced Consulting Partner.

Lobster's objective was to offer its customers a flexible, simple and scalable solution for integrating software products for data, system and process integration in their own IT environment. In addition, an experienced AWS partner was to relieve the burden on the IT department's own resources in order to refocus on the core business. A scalable, flexible and cost-efficient IT infrastructure in the AWS Cloud that automatically adapts to the number and requirements of Lobster's customers was favoured.

Initially, a kickoff workshop was held with Lobster DATA GmbH to evaluate the initial situation, discuss the necessary project content and steps with the associated timeline, and plan the required managed services for ongoing operations.

The next project step included the architecture design with the objective of designing a scalable and highly available customer infrastructure. For subsequent implementation, it became clear that Lobster DATA GmbH would also have to undergo change management, for example to adapt internal IT processes as a result of the cloud migration.

During the migration of the on-premise environment to the public cloud and the subsequent operation of the environments through managed services, automated customer environments were deployed based on CloudFormation templates.

Managed service operation is provided in the form of patch management, monitoring, backup management and incident management in a 24x7 support by our Operations Center.

Lobster DATA GmbH now uses the AWS Cloud as a scalable, global platform to deploy its own software products in minutes. What previously took hours, or days by an on-site technician, is now up and running in minutes.

Three sales variants were designed and implemented by our AWS Cloud experts:

• A test version of the software hosted on AWS: Our experts handle the complete migration of the software from on-premise to the AWS cloud, and update releases of the software at regular intervals on the cloud platform
• Full version of the software for business customers: The migration and subsequent operation of the cloud infrastructure are implemented by our team in the form of incident management, and managed services that relate to the permanent monitoring of the cloud infrastructure.
• Enterprise variant for large customers with individual cloud platform requirements: Our experts carry out a consultation to evaluate customer requirements, which are then implemented during the migration and made available for ongoing software operations.

After the successful migration of Lobster DATA GmbH to the public cloud of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the subsidiary Lobster Logistics Cloud followed suit in a second project step. Its local infrastructure was previously operated by a hoster and migrated to the cloud by our AWS experts. Managed services are also used here to ensure smooth and continuous operation.

The result is a scalable and cost-transparent cloud development environment for internal software developments.

Steffen Brehme, CTO & Managing Director Lobster DATA GmbH:

"The AWS Cloud provides us and our IT infrastructures with completely new opportunities for efficient software development and deployment: our core business has come back into focus, as we have streamlined time- and resource-consuming processes by migrating to the cloud on the one hand, and fully automated them through managed services on the other."

Public Cloud Group (PCG) supports companies in their digital transformation through the use of public cloud solutions.

With a product portfolio designed to accompany organisations of all sizes in their cloud journey and competence that is a synonym for highly qualified staff that clients and partners like to work with, PCG is positioned as a reliable and trustworthy partner for the hyperscalers, relevant and with repeatedly validated competence and credibility.

We have the highest partnership status with the three relevant hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft. As experienced providers, we advise our customers independently with cloud implementation, application development, and managed services.