CREATING A GLOBALLY ACCESSIBLE WEB PLATFORM FOR CUSTOMERS AND BUSINESSES

Dentaid wanted to create two web platforms, one to create closer bonds with their customers (PAP), and another aimed at electronic commerce between companies (B2B). It was essential that communication between the web platforms and source applications such as ERP, CRM, and MDM systems was possible. Furthermore, the rollout was planned on a global level which meant that solutions from other countries needed to be integrated into the service-oriented architecture (SOA).

At the time of the project, the client had a small team of system administrators, which meant that the design of the final architecture needed to be very low maintenance.

When implementing an external-facing system it is important to create an automatic backup and recovery system in order to ensure always-on services and minimize server downtime. To this end, the client wanted a 1-hour Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and a 30-minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) with a service timetable of 24 x 7 x 365. During the initial discovery phase of the project, it was determined that 9 applications would need to interact with the SOA layer including PAP, B2B, PI, BI, VEEVA CRM, SAP ERP, WEB, and CMS. 

A FLEXIBLE SOA AND MULTI-REGIONAL CLOUD PLATFORM 

It was determined that the Oracle SOA Suite would be used for the web platforms and should reside in AWS. The Oracle SOA Suite is an excellent middleware platform that could help with data management, application services, and authentication among other things. The multi-regional nature of the AWS Cloud meant that global expansion would be possible without significant investments in new infrastructure. 

SOLID MIDDLEWARE ARCHITECTURE AT THE CORE 

A single instance of an Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server was used in an auto-scaling group across multiple AWS Availability Zones. The auto-scaling group will help to ensure that there will always be one instance online, in whatever available area, helping to achieve the desired RTO of 1 hour and RPO of 30 minutes. Application access was done using an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) for which an alias was created in Route53 to facilitate access to it through a custom URL. 

An Elastic File System (EFS) was then used to create the shared directories, which facilitated simultaneous file sharing across Availability Zones, without the need for additional host locations, therefore helping to reduce costs by paying only for the used storage.

The Oracle database instance was facilitated using the AWS RDS service with a BYOL (Bring-Your-Own-License) model. Multiple Availability Zones were once again used, further helping to establish the desired RTO / RPO and reducing future maintenance tasks, backup management, performance monitoring, and so on.

Finally, in order to make EFS backup copies, the AWS Data Pipeline service was used, which makes a daily copy with a 7-day retention, as well as a bi-weekly copy with a 2-month retention. 

The solution design architecture can be seen in the figure below.

The new web platform has helped Dentaid to achieve its desired goal of communicating and fostering closer bonds with customers and enabled B2B eCommerce, all on a global level. 

ABOUT DENTAID

Dentaid is a global company leading in oral health research that works to improve people’s oral health, by offering next-generation solutions through research and constant innovation. It develops physical, chemical, or mechanical solutions for the prevention and care of diseases caused by oral biofilm or by diverse oral conditions caused by other factors. The company has a workforce of more than 400 people, and in 2017 it exceeded the threshold of 100 million euros of turnover for the first time in its history. Dentaid has subsidiaries in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Chile, Colombia, and Peru and a large network of sixty-three distributors across five continents.