Crisp: From the Datacenter to Google Cloud
How Zencore Helped Crisp Migrate to GKE Autopilot and Cloud SQL.
From the Datacenter to Google Cloud
Project Location:
New York, NY
Industry:
Retail Analytics Software
Use Case:
Cloud Migration & Modernization
Website:
GoCrisp.com
In January 2023, Crisp, a leader in supply chain optimization for zero waste, acquired Integral Group, a company specializing in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Integral’s critical operations, relied on legacy technologies and manual management and required modernization and integration into Crisp’s cloud- based infrastructure.
The objective was to transition these operations to Google Cloud, leveraging Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures to enhance scalability, reliability, and efficiency.
About Crisp
Crisp’s mission is to create a zero waste supply chain. They do that by connecting and analyzing retail data across the supply chain, empowering brands, distributors and retailers with real-time, actionable insights to keep shelves stocked, reduce waste, and skyrocket profitability.
The Challenge
Crisp faced significant challenges in integrating Integral Group’s legacy systems, which were characterized by outdated technologies such as DB2, manually provisioned VM infrastructure, and minimal CI/CD practices. The merger necessitated a strategic approach to migrate and modernize these mission-critical applications to a cloud- native platform, ensuring seamless operations and alignment with Crisp’s innovative supply chain solutions.
Solution
Zencore, a cloud consulting firm with expertise in Google Cloud, was engaged to facilitate this transition. The firm developed a Google Cloud hosting platform incorporating key technologies such as GKE Autopilot, Cloud SQL (Postgres), and Cloud Filestore, aligned with Crisp’s high level of engineering standard.
A significant aspect of the solution was the implementation of a modern CI/CD pipeline, utilizing tools such as ArgoCD, Helm, Terraform, and GitHub. This setup enabled a containerized deployment model within a multi-clustered Kubernetes environment, streamlining the migration process and setting a foundation for future scalability and operational agility.
"The opportunity cost of deploying our product engineers on infrastructure work is almost always too high for our organization, regardless of how critical that work may be. Zencore supplies us with the experienced engineers we need to be able to respond
to these needs without cannibalizing the resources that are dedicated to our product roadmap."
Impact and Outcome
The collaboration between Crisp and Zencore resulted in a successful migration of critical EDI applications to Google Cloud, establishing a robust, scalable, and cloud-native architecture. This modernization effort not only improved operational efficiency and reliability but also positioned Crisp to better achieve its mission of creating a zero-waste supply chain through enhanced data connectivity and real-time insights.
Services Included
- A custom End-to-end EDI integration application
- A commerce desktop app - a fully EDI compliant web portal that is being used to manage orders, shipments and invoices
- A cloud-based interface to monitor EDI transactions
Key Achievements
- Successful lift-and-shift of critical EDI, commerce, monitoring workloads
- Built multi-cluster Kubernetes foundation (GKE Autopilot)
- Cloud SQL for managed relational database needs
- Automated CI/CD deployment pipelines
- Cloud infrastructure management via IaC (Terraform)
- Retired colocation environment
Business Value
Enabled real-time supply chain analytics platform with improved stability, security compliance, operational efficiency gains from cloud management.