Mobiltek improved flexibility by migrating to microservices

CASE STUDY: MOBILTEK

Mobiltek is the leading provider of mobile payments and IT solutions for transaction systems. Its dynamic development increased the demands on infrastructure and forced the streamlining and automation of processes. The company decided to migrate from monolithic applications to microservices, utilize Kubernetes and entrust environment management to the Oktawave team.

CHALLENGES

Mobiltek’s systems expanded to the point where maintenance on own servers became problematic. The company had already cloned its infrastructure in the Oktawave cloud several years before and used it when the main production environment had to be shut down (e.g. for the application of updates). However, that solution gradually became insufficient. Moreover, Mobiltek began to develop dynamically: it introduced Direct Carrier Billing and applied for a payment institution license and connection to BLIK. Thus, the systems called for thorough changes. The data security requirements also kept growing. The heavily burdened IT team was unable to manage the infrastructure efficiently and ensure a smooth supply of business functions.

The company faced a choice: it could expand its own team or find an external partner to provide the necessary solution and support. It quickly turned out that the required competence level was very high and the team needed theoretical and technical support concerning microservices, Dockerization, and Kubernetes.

We began searching for theoretical support from external consultants who could help us design and deploy new infrastructure. We made that decision when it turned out that the systems which were .NET, .NET Core, and PHP monolithic applications blocked further efficient development of products. Those environments were launched as virtual machines and their maintenance consumed too much of our precious time.

Maciej Langman, CEO Mobiltek S.A.

SOLUTIONS

Mobiltek approached Oktawave to deliver a cloud environment with specified services: managed Kubernetes, database clusters, network file storage, and network services. After agreeing on the cooperation scope, the Oktawave team started to prepare the infrastructure and services. We configured and launched a test cluster and then a Kubernetes production cluster. We also configured Kubernetes Components (DNS, Load Balancer, Container Network Interface, Container Resource Monitoring, Cluster-Level Logging), provided monitoring of resource use and Pod lifecycle, and deployed autoscaling mechanisms. The Mobiltek team began to prepare for refactoring of the existing system into microservices. The cooperation allowed Mobiltek to convert the applications to containerized environments using database clusters (PostgreSQL with Patroni).

As part of ongoing maintenance Oktawave ensures operation continuity of the Kubernetes cluster, carries out proactive 24/7/365 infrastructure monitoring, handles support tickets, and takes care of architecture optimization and reconfiguration.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

Containerization and the Kubernetes platform allowed Mobiltek to move from monolithic architecture to microservices and achieve its main objective: quick response to market needs by making the application development processes faster and more flexible. Other benefits include instant scaling and high availability. The company also wanted its developers and engineers to become specialists in the deployment of business functions for payment services instead of devoting their time to infrastructure and Kubernetes management. Now that the Cloud Masters team at Oktawave is responsible for environment maintenance, the Mobiltek development team can focus on company progress instead.

The benefits of such approach were almost instantly visible in company results, operating activities, and compliance. For example, the new cloud data processing guidelines issued by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) have recently entered into force. We are able to meet these regulatory requirements thanks to our cooperation with Oktawave.

Maciej Langman, CEO Mobiltek S.A.