Mercedes-Benz AG is one of the biggest producers of premium cars and the world's biggest manufacturer of commercial vehicles with a global reach.
To scale to meet growing demand, it was crucial to accelerate digital business capabilities. Modernizing the existing on-premise application platform would enable success. The processes around firewall requests for integration between on-premises services were crucial for security, but could be complex and time-consuming. This was affecting the speed at which client teams delivered business value, since they had to navigate complex systems around networking, security and compliance.
Working to understand the current design, processes, challenges and history of the on-premises systems, Thoughtworks proposed a flexible digital platform strategy on the cloud, as a differentiator which would enable growth. A collaborative approach between the client and Thoughtworks promoted trust and ownership. The team successfully built and deployed a cloud platform on AWS fitting seamlessly into their existing network infrastructure.
The platform allows on-premise systems to be migrated to the cloud. This was achieved by using a range of AWS services, such as PrivateLink, Transit Gateway, VPC Endpoint Service, and Route53. The design involves a shared governance model, allowing teams to be independent in building their applications in the cloud while offering secure and seamless access to existing on-premises systems. The solution guarantees availability by being spread across multiple availability zones and security by using AWS PrivateLink and VPC Endpoints to restrict access to services only to authorized teams.
The Thoughtworks team also used Terraform for infrastructure as code, to create discrete modules to enable a frictionless handover of each component of the solution, along with automated deployment orchestration via Continuous Delivery pipelines. The platform provides delivery teams centralized services for encryption and logging (utilizing AWS ElasticSearch for search). It ensures security and compliance by centralizing auditing and log management.
The platform team delivered working accounts to multiple delivery teams and built an alternative to OpenShift on AWS in 9 months. Through the creative use of AWS technologies, a managed solution was built, allowing a frictionless handover without having to provide sustained networking support. This has significantly reduced the complexity of delivering business solutions, empowering the client to deliver within a cost-effective, performant and safe environment.
