How we helped Leaseweb improve their customer experience
Leaseweb is a leading Dutch cloud-based services provider. Their portfolio includes, among other things, customized server solutions. Read the case story of how Boldare built an automatic installation system for this client and made their server services more customer friendly.
Table of contents
The problem - how to deliver a great service even faster?
The relationship between Leaseweb and Boldare stretched between 2008 and 2014. During that time we successfully built a number of digital products together, one of them being Leaseweb’s Central Installation System (CIS for short). In simple terms, CIS delivered customized server solutions to customers without the need for a manual setup. In order to do so effectively, Leaseweb’s CIS had to include:
- provisioning management through a web application,
- automated installation of servers,
- full integration with existing infrastructure (SaaS),
- semi-automated installations (tracing manual steps performed, adjusting statuses, notifications),
- accessibility via both web API and web UI,
- tracking of several data centers’ stock.
To include so many features in one application, Boldare needed a holistic approach to take care of the architecture design, implementation, testing, integration, and deployment of the solution.
Frameworks, protocols, and approaches - how Boldare took on the challenge.
Leaseweb’s CIS was a massive infrastructure of over fifty different applications with just as many functions. Among them, were apps responsible for:
- storing information about available products,
- configuring servers,
- placing orders,
- managing orders by the sales department,
- storing customers’ details,
- customer portals.
In the early phases of development, Leaseweb’s CIS was written in Symfony 1.4 - a PHP framework created for web applications. As the development progressed, the application was rewritten for the Symfony 2 framework.
The Boldare team integrated into the app an open-source components library called Bootstrap, which offers a huge base of components and is a budget-friendly choice. The interface was built using SOAP and the REST Web API - a leading technology on the market.
How does our solution affect the product - and its users?
Leaseweb’s Central Installation System was now able to access newly-purchased servers within 20 minutes. At that point, the process continued automatically except for unusual tasks, such as adding more RAM, replacing the CPU, etc. The customers had a reason to be satisfied, but what about our client? It’s best summarized with their reaction to our work:
Thank you for the excellent job you are doing-especially in this last sprint of the project.
Ignacio Manrique de Lara, Leaseweb
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