Why migrating twice is sometimes needed

Ecare is an innovative IT company from Enschede, the Netherlands. That was founded in 2007, with the development of a software solution for healthcare companies. A system that empowered the caregivers to fully focus on providing care. Since then Ecare has grown to become a serious player in the market, with their smart en simple SaaS-solutions for all kinds of care institutions.

PUUR.

One of their SaaS-applications is ‘PUUR.’. This is a simple, clear and user-friendly filing system for healthcare organizations. In which the caregiver has an overview of his or her daily work. In addition, it offers features to do assessments, write reports and safely share information with clients and other caregivers.

Technical Lead Leon van der Riet explains: “This filing system was originally built on a monolithic architecture. In which the user interface, the functionality, the processing and storage of the data, were combined in one data model.”

Challenges

At first this data model functioned properly. But as the number of customers started to grow rapidly, the first challenges arose. The monolith was not as scalable, as was desired by the performance. At the same time, new customers arrived, with specific functional requirements. These requests were often added to the application, without having a functional assurance.

“It became harder to manage”, explains Leon. “Pieces of the code were not cleaned up. And the names were not always unambiguous. That caused various processes to overperform. With double costs, performance challenges and complexity as a result.”

Microservices

To increase the flexibility and scalability of the applications, Ecare decided to implement a microservices architecture. In which different components of the application use the same services. A challenging migration. Ecare decided that they could use some help with this. Leon: “We were looking for an organization that could peer review our code. As well as advise us on things like scalability, governance and how to get the most out of Azure. ”

Big step forward

“Microsoft introduced us to Intercept. They helped us straighten out the code. Intercept also advised us to move our largest customer, for whom we were still using a physical data center, to Azure. This enabled us to phase out our data center. That is a big step in the right direction for us. As a result, we no longer have to invest in maintaining two systems that serve the same purpose, ”says Leon.

‘’The migration went smoothly. I think Intercept is the only organization in the Netherlands that can do this.” Leon van de Riet Technical Lead

Cloud independent

The time that Ecare saved, by phasing out the data center, was well invested. In self development on the ins and outs of Kubernetes and Docker. “We truly are a Microsoft oriented organization”, says Leon. “We want to maximize the benefits of Azure, but at the same time retain the option to switch to another cloud partner. Intercept helped us with that, by confirming that we are on the right track with Kubernetes. ”

From EA to CSP

Intercept recently advised Ecare to transfer from an Enterprise Agreement (EA) to a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) subscription. "In the past we had to make a pre-commitment to Microsoft. With the CSP subscription we simply pay Intercept a monthly fee, based on what we’ve actually used." Yet the costs were not the main reason why Ecare made the switch. “It was mainly about the support that Intercept offers. It is nice to have a local partner that has a lot of knowledge of Azure. ”

Smooth

“I was a bit hesitant about the migration,” admits Leon. “In the past I migrated an EA to a CSP. At the time I had to move and recreate all our resources. At Ecare we have a few thousand resources. Intercept assured me that the migration would be quick and easy. And it showed. The migration went smoothly. I think Intercept is the only organization in the Netherlands that can do this.”

Improved performance

The first pieces of the microservices architecture are now in use. “Thanks to the advice that Intercept provided, we are making great progress in our microservices architecture,” says Leon enthusiastically. This progress really shows. Both to the development team and the end users. “We used to have performance problems at peak hours, we are now able to spread this throughout the day. That has significantly improved our performance. ”