Nike, through its brand “FCB Merchandising” managed from 2002 to 2018 the manufacture and operation of the entire retail market of Football Club Barcelona.

They are 16 years of a business that came to include three own stores, 15 licensed stores and 328 licensees. With a workforce of more than 250 employees, 7,000 licensed products and generating an annual turnover of around 65 million euros.

NIKE Barcelona Merchandising:
Change of platform in the AWS cloud

What challenge was the company facing?

FC Barcelona hosted its entire retail structure on a hybrid platform deployed on AWS and a data center in Barcelona, both locations managed by apser.

This platform was deployed on a mixed server platform Windows Server 2012 with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and Linux, around the point of sale management tool ICG Software with integrations with SAGE and Qlikview among other solutions.

In 2018, FC Barcelona decided to reorganize its management of the market and, although the manufacturing of the merchandising is still in Nike’s charge, the exploitation of the merchandising is carried out by the club through a new company of its own, Barça Licensing and Merchandising. This change meant that FC Barcelona took over the management both at the operational level and at the IT level of all these services.

Nike then faced a challenge in multiple areas:

  • He needed to keep all the historical work done with his client FC Barcelona during the 16 years of the relationship
  • As manufacturing was going to remain in the hands of Nike, it was necessary to continue working with the same operation as before
  • Since the economic impact of FC Barcelona’s decision was very large, the aim was to keep costs to a minimum but with maximum durability and stability of the service

Implemented solution

Nike consulted apser and ICG’s solution provider for a plan to achieve the goals it had set. With the clear objective of keeping costs to a minimum, apser proposed the creation of a new client area in AWS for Nike, since the one in use was to be managed exclusively by FC Barcelona, with a server with the minimum viable resources and migrating with the help of the ICG partner the database relating to the data owned by Nike.

An EC2 server based on EBS storage of the SSD type was deployed. Lifecycle Manager for the management of backups and GuardDuty for the analysis of possible security incidents were also implemented. To minimize improper accesses, access to the server was restricted using Security Groups limited to the IP’s of the client’s offices.

As an additional cost control measure, apser implemented its server scheduling solution to turn on and off to coincide with the client’s workday.

Deployment took place in July 2019 according to planning designed not to impact the client’s business.

Results

Once the deployment was complete, the client could continue to use the platform they had been working on for more than 15 years, keeping the history of their data in a maximum security environment, and with 20% cost savings due to the automatic shutdown of the server at night.

0 %

De ahorro en costes de plataforma, gracias al planteamiento de pago por uso de AWS que permite disponer de la plataforma solo cuando el cliente realmente lo necesita

Next steps

The following expected challenges are:

  • Minimize costs further by allowing the client to turn off and turn on the server when needed.
  • Inclusion of a VPN system for private access to the environment even if it is not located in any of the client’s offices .

Why apser

apser is the AWS Advanced Consulting Partner specializing in companies, public administrations, startups and non-profit.

The apser team provides a customized, easy-to-understand and agile approach with the goal of contributing to the widespread adoption of the cloud paradigm.

Our team operates through two business units: Cloud Solutions (acting as a managed services provider) and Cloud Professional Services (acting as a consulting firm).

In 2018 we had our first experience with AWS. Since then, we have not stopped incorporating knowledge and experience that, day by day, help us improve the effectiveness of our clients’ platforms. You can consult our AWS Validated Qualifications here.

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