Speed Up Online Shipments and Innovate: Navlungo

*Originally published by AWS.

Logistics technology company Navlungo worked with AWS Partner Sufle to modernize its infrastructure and move to a serverless architecture. With Sufle’s help, Navlungo migrated to Amazon Web Services (AWS) from a previous cloud provider in 3 months, with almost no downtime for customers. Using AWS, Navlungo has streamlined and automated processes, resulting in greater efficiency for developers and developed a responsive and reliable customer experience. The startup is now set up to support growth and innovation for the future.

Rapid Growth Means Navlungo Needed to Modernize for Greater Expansion

Navlungo, was founded in 2017 when four Turkish engineers wanted to bring the convenience of online ecommerce sales to the field of logistics. Today global transport businesses use the company’s solutions to receive instant quotes from more than 250 shipping suppliers on moving cargo and freight.

After an initial period of rapid growth, Navlungo realized its infrastructure was limiting its potential. Its DevOps team had to take turns sharing its one development environment, meaning it was time-consuming to test and rollout new products and updates. Reliance on manual processes opened up Navlungo to security risks and human error, as well as proving inefficient. In addition, slow page-loading times on its website and frequent app downtime degraded its customer experience and threatened to impact satisfaction ratings.

Navlungo turned to AWS Partner Sufle, to help it modernize its infrastructure and build an agile business ready for expansion. “We chose Sufle because of its experience with AWS and its collaborative approach,” says Mutlu Boz, chief technology officer at Navlungo. “It feels like we’re all on the same team, sharing our perspectives and working together to achieve our goals.”

Using AWS is inspiring for our developers. It’s sped up our time to market for new products and features, a critical factor for keeping pace with competitors.

Mutlu Boz, Chief Technology Officer, Navlungo

Migrating to AWS in 3 Months with No Customer Complaints

Sufle advised Navlungo to migrate its infrastructure to AWS for greater reliability and scalability. Switching to open-source technologies that AWS supports also led to cost savings. By shifting its databases to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, an open-source relational database, Navlungo reduced operational costs by 50 percent, and improved performance compared to its previous proprietary solution.

The teams followed best practices from AWS Well-Architected, which helps cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure. “Security was a priority from day one to protect the brand reputation and avoid costly breaches,” says Baris Balta, founder and principal solutions architect at Sufle. “We used the AWS best practices and CIS Benchmarks to support our methodical approach.”

The migration lasted 3 months and resulted in only a few minutes of downtime. “Sufle helped us to develop a strategy that didn’t disrupt our customers,” says Boz. “The process was flawless, and we received no customer complaints about performance during the move.”

To ensure customers could run shipping quotes during the transition, Navlungo used the AWS Database Migration Service, which helps to migrate databases quickly and securely.

Faster Page Loading and Real-Time Tracking Details

Navlungo customers now experience a more responsive and reliable app and website. User-facing solutions are easy to scale as customer numbers and traffic levels grow, and page load times are 83 percent faster.

Using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service, and Amazon CloudFront, a low-latency content delivery network, Navlungo systems have had no downtime on AWS compared to an average downtime of 2 percent with its previous cloud provider. And unexpected application errors have decreased by 30 percent since the migration to AWS.

New streamlined and automated processes in warehouses have sped up shipping times, resulting in better service for customers. Navlungo can now move on shipments the same day they arrive at the warehouse.

Customers also have greater peace of mind from receiving detailed tracking information about their cargo and freight, as well as monthly performance reports. These include metrics on shipments such as the number of packages, their contents, carrier name, and delivery time. “We provide customers with detailed knowledge of their shipments, to help run their businesses more efficiently,” says Boz.

Developers Inspired by AWS, Speed Up Deployments by 30%

Developer experience is a key priority for Navlungo. “Empowering developers with the right tools and technologies makes them happier and more productive,” says Boz. “Using AWS is inspiring for them. It’s sped up our time to market for new products and features—a critical factor for keeping pace with competitors.”

Sufle helped the development team to adopt best practices for application life cycles. Automating production pipelines using AWS Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), increased deployment frequency by 30 percent, and the number of software releases rose to twice per day, up from once a week.

Developers can now easily experiment with the wide variety of AWS services and build serverless applications in days. When it comes to testing, developers can spin up ‘playground’ environments in a couple of minutes, compared to previously when they had to take turns working in one test environment. This means products and features are delivered more quickly and are of higher quality.

Sufle supported the Navlungo DevOps team through the changes. “They were always there to answer my never-ending questions,” says Deniz Gokcin, DevOps engineer at Navlungo. “I’ve learned a lot and feel more confident in my skills now. The whole team is embracing the cloud and finding ways to innovate.”

Business Users Gain Greater Insights Using Amazon QuickSight

Navlungo derives greater value from its data now, using Amazon QuickSight, a cloud-native serverless business intelligence (BI) service. Business users have instant access to operational or financial information from any web browser, and can create custom reports that help them investigate issues such as warehouse performance, cash flow, and the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

Smarter use of data has resulted in more efficient operations, too. Using QuickSight, Navlungo saves time and money by being able to view package contents before items arrive at warehouses, so any issues around which carriers can carry which materials are addressed as soon as possible. “Because business users can self-service BI reports, we’ve reduced the workload of the IT team, and provided them with the information they need to understand and improve all aspects of our organization,” says Boz.

A Future of Growth and Innovation on AWS

Navlungo has grown the number and value of transactions by over 200 percent in the past year. Now it aims to expand into new markets across Europe, the UK, and the US.

Using AWS supports this growth because it has data centers around the world that can serve local customers. “We’re ready to expand and serve a global market,” says Boz. “Since working with Sufle, our infrastructure is more modern and our use of the cloud more mature, so I feel confident in widening our reach.”

Sufle is proud to have taken part in setting up an infrastructure that supports the company’s ambitions. “Navlungo’s teams are open-minded and like to experiment,” says Balta. “It’s been exciting to be curious together and find ways to really make a difference for their business and their customers.”

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