AWS DB Freedom, operated by Flexa Cloud, guarantees security and savings for the startup of systems for bars and restaurants.
A frogs is a startup that uses artificial intelligence and cognitive computing to provide state-of-the-art systems for managing restaurants and bars. Headquartered in São Leopoldo/RS, it serves thousands of customers throughout Brazil.
Therefore, Saipos deals with an exponential volume of data, both its own data and that of customers and integrators (from services such as iFood, for example). And this entire range of information needs to be stored and processed in an infrastructure that guarantees 24/XNUMX availability and reliability.
With the growth of Saipos, some problems began to arise. One of them is the increase in database expenses.
In this article, you will see how the company's challenge of migrating from Oracle database to PostgreSQL was solved using DB Freedom, an AWS service operated by Flexa Cloud.
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Challenge
Reduce database costs and scale to keep growing.
Saipos is today the company that most transacts orders with iFood, Uber Eats and Rappi platforms. “There is no POS in Brazil that processes more orders than Saipos currently,” says Kenner Grings, CTO of Saipos.
“We help bars and restaurants run their businesses. Our system provides functionalities for operational management, whether for those businesses that provide on-site service or those that work with delivery. Our 100% cloud software helps from inventory to finance, from sales to franchise management, and in connection with delivery applications,” says Grings.
All this operational grandeur has its challenges. Saipos's own operation is complex; there are 148 employees distributed in several states of the country, with 40% working from home.
Eric Alves, leader of special projects at Saipos, says that for a long time the Oracle database served the company very well. But that has changed in the last year. “With the growth of the business, with the scale of the number of users and everything else, this bank ended up being an obstacle to the growth of the application. The costs generated, for example, were very high”.
“One minute of instability on the platform at peak hours can cause a loss of more than 100 thousand reais for our customers. It is a very critical operation that cannot be unstable.”
— Kenner Grings, CTO of Saipos.
It was then that Saipos management concluded that it was time to migrate to a free database, which, at the same time, would reduce costs and provide technical resources for scalability. “At the point we reached, in order to be able to support a greater load of users on the system, we needed to increase the capacity of the database, and generating more costs was out of the question”, says Eric Aves.
Solution
AWS DB Freedom performed by Flexa Cloud: migration to PostgreSQL database.
It was there that the field entered the Flexa Cloud, which has been assisting Saipos in monitoring and observability services for the application for two years.
Flexa Cloud is a partner of Amazon Web Services, and has extensive expertise in DB Freedom, a program created by AWS to help companies migrate from traditional database engines to free databases.
A project to migrate the Oracle database to PostgreSQL was then started, with the Flexa and Saipos teams working together.
“Flexa was essential to pass on knowledge to us. We didn't have experienced Postgre staff. In addition, we needed to make sure that we wouldn't have outages during the process, and Flexa's experts gave us that assurance.”
— Eric Alves, special projects leader at Saipos.
All project execution was carried out with Flexa specialists working remotely. “It took two months, because, due to lack of manpower, the work took a little longer. Considering that we were dealing with the migration of a volume of more than 2 billion data, and that we did several tests to ensure complete success, we are satisfied with the duration of the process”, says Alves.
Result
Safe and reliable migration process; 30% database cost savings.
“The costs for scaling using Oracle started to become unfeasible. Now we can have the elasticity to meet varied demands using PostgreSQL Aurora clusters, especially at peak times. We can, for example, use more than one instance of a bank at the same time, distributing it on smaller machines and, with that, having the scalability and elasticity that we need”, says Kenner Grings.
Saipos executives also celebrate a 30% reduction in monthly database costs.
“Our immediate priority was to ensure that the application worked exactly the way it did with Oracle. And we got it. Now we also have the prospect of opening up other possibilities in the application: read replicas, BI, API openings for querying clients… What's to come — which this migration will make possible — is much to celebrate”.
— Kenner Grings, CTO of Saipos.
Saipos executives celebrate partnership with Flexa Cloud
For the leader of special projects, Eric Alves, “the technical knowledge that Flexa applied during this project was very important. Eight trials were run, which gave us peace of mind. The problems that appeared were very small compared to the size of this database migration”.
Talking about the partnership with Flexa, Kenner Grings, CTO of Saipos, even has an image that helps to explain the adventure that the project represented:
“I like to think about how skydiving has helped me succeed in this migration process. In a parachute jump, there can be no failures. Rehearsing and briefing while on the ground is extremely important so that, at the time of the jump, we know how to reproduce what was simulated. [In the DB Freedom process], the technical support and simulations performed ensured a smooth flight when it happened for real.”
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