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Client Story

Global telecommunications leader combats downtime with Blue-Green deployment strategy

Client: Global telecommunications company
Region: Global
Sector: Telecommunications

Capgemini-led approach reduces application downtime by 95 percent

Client challenge: A global telecommunications company faced substantial downtime during release nights, prolonged deployment periods, and time-consuming rollback procedures.

Solution: Capgemini implemented Azure’s Blue-Green deployment strategy to minimize downtime and enhance efficiency in deployment periods and rollback procedures

Benefits:

  • Zero to minimal downtime on release nights  
  • 95% reduction in deployment timeframe
  • Drastic reduction in time to complete rollback processes

A global telecommunications giant is on a mission to connect customers from all over the globe. It provides wireless communications, data communications, voice, and text messaging services to a sprawling network of customers.

Though the enterprise is a global leader within its industry, remaining on top requires persistent innovation and unparalleled adaptation. To remain ahead of the competition and provide the best service possible, there’s a continual need for updates within its application environment.

Overwhelmed by inefficiency

One of the biggest inhibitors to efficiency during the deployment of upgraded applications was lengthy downtime periods. Prolonged deployment timeframes and laborious rollback procedures led to even more downtime, and subsequently, dissatisfied customers.

These inefficiencies highlighted a need for support from a trusted partner who could instill an improved process for upgrading the company’s application services.

A better way to get the job done

Capgemini deployed Microsoft Azure’s Blue-Green strategy to combat downtime across the enterprise.

Previously, servers were required to shut down for engineers to implement changes in code to application services. These servers were then reopened once the process was complete.

With the Blue-Green strategy, two distinct virtual environments co-exist. The “Blue” environment serves all user traffic, while the “Green” environment runs idly in the background. When it’s time to deploy upgrades to the application environment, changes in code are implemented on the “Green” side. Once complete, a custom-built Traffic Manager sends users from the “Blue” environment to the “Green” environment. Instead of each application user depending on the uptime of a single server, engineers can deploy updates while users continue to access application services.  

This approach allows for safe code deployments during business hours and removes the requirement to implement code hastily to avoid downtime. It also provides an opportunity to test upgraded environments with live traffic.

The implementation of this process removed the need for deployment downtime and transformed the process of upgrading the enterprise’s applications efficiently.

Capgemini deployed this strategy throughout the entire application infrastructure. We ensured that these enhancements in app services were seamlessly integrated into every API, and that the Traffic Manager script was effective in redirecting user traffic between each application environment.

Making a difference with the Blue-Green strategy

Following the implementation of the Blue-Green strategy, the entire deployment now takes between five and ten minutes to complete, resulting in minimal, if any, downtime on release nights. This strategy also reduced the deployment timeframe by 95 percent. Previously, deployment would take anywhere between one and three hours to complete.

By deploying on idle servers, engineers can test functionality in a variety of business scenarios prior to the release date, ensuring business readiness. The use of idle servers also allowed for flexibility in the rollback process. Before users interact with the newly upgraded application, external teams must validate the readiness of the application. By utilizing the dual server solution, rolling back to a previous version of the application in the event of any hiccups in the validation process is no longer a laborious, time-consuming process – taking between five and ten minutes to complete.

Additionally, the Quality Team can now discern distinct variations in functionality between new and old servers, enabling an improved form of comparison testing.

Welcoming a better future

Capgemini’s Cloud and Custom Applications team revitalized the enterprise’s application upgrade procedure, ensuring that they were equipped to deploy enhancements in their services with improved efficiency and accuracy.

With an improved deployment process now in place, the telecommunications giant can focus on connecting customers from around the world.