Overview & Challenge
Our client is a prominent European player in the global logistics and supply chain industry, operating in both freight management and contract logistics sectors. Headquartered in France, Client’s operations span across 160 countries, employing a workforce of 98,000 individuals distributed among 6 regions.
The Client’s existing Mule 4 implementation was built in a monolithic architecture, making it hard to maintain and scale, resulting in inefficient processes and limited growth potential. The complex codebase posed challenges in understanding and modifying the system, slowing down customer onboarding and team integration. The use of XML data format for internal communication further complicated troubleshooting and analyzing system logs. Additionally, the high memory usage of synchronous-only operations resulted in prolonged message processing times, hindering operational efficiency. To address these issues and accommodate the growing customer base and digital services demand, a significant overhaul of the client’s technical infrastructure became imperative.
Objectives
The main objectives were to redesign the monolithic architecture into a more scalable, reusable, and maintainable API-led architecture, optimize the logging process, improve the performance and efficiency of message processing, and enable faster onboarding of new customers.
Solution
Analysis & Strategy
We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the existing Mule 4 applications to understand the intricacies and constraints of the system. This allowed us to identify the areas that needed improvement and formulate a more effective and efficient architectural strategy.
Technical Solution
We reworked the monolithic architecture into an API-led approach, which allowed for easier maintenance and deployment of new features/bug fixes. We switched to JSON for internal communication, leading to clearer and more comprehensible logs. We also simplified most of the complex functions and removed unnecessary ones, leading to easier maintenance and quicker project growth. Moreover, we introduced the capability for the client to choose/configure synchronous or asynchronous communication, significantly improving performance optimization. Finally, we implemented a dynamic solution for the rapid addition of new customers using DB configuration for dynamic routing.
Implementation
The transition to an API-led approach meant that some existing applications had to be rebuilt from scratch. We faced challenges in the process, including streamlining the communication between different applications, simplifying complex functions, and implementing a dynamic routing solution. However, we managed to overcome these obstacles through effective teamwork, technical proficiency, and robust project management.
Business Outcomes
Performance Metrics
The implementation of the API-led architecture resulted in significantly improved performance and scalability. The transition to JSON for internal communication and the implementation of a CDM data model resulted in greatly improved logging, leading to faster bug/issue resolution. Furthermore, the simplification of DataWeave transformations and the introduction of dynamic routing contributed to the overall efficiency of the system.
Business Impact
The redesigning and new implementation brought many benefits, including reduced complexity enabling faster onboarding, improved performance, and scalability, simplified DataWeave transformations, and improved logging leading to faster bug/issue resolution. This solution future-proofed the client’s architecture, ensuring it can easily scale with the client’s growth and swiftly adapt to changing business needs.
