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Cloud & DevOpsClient Project
Retail Digital Transformation
A 12-month program taking a brick-and-mortar retailer to cloud-native omnichannel commerce
The client's name is withheld. Ask us to walk you through this build live.
Client
An established brick-and-mortar retailer
Timeline
12-month program
Next.jsNode.jsNestJSPostgreSQLAWSTerraform
About This Project
The client was an established brick-and-mortar retailer with dozens of physical stores and no meaningful online presence. This 12-month program modernized the company end to end. A COBOL-era back office was replaced with microservices on AWS, an omnichannel e-commerce platform launched with buy-online-pickup-in-store, and a customer data platform now feeds personalization and loyalty. More than twenty internal systems moved to cloud-native alternatives, and the client's own engineers were trained to operate the result.
The Engineering Problem
Transformation programs fail more often on sequencing than on technology: revenue must keep flowing through systems being replaced, and a team that has never shipped cloud software has to end the program running one.
- •A COBOL-based inventory core with no APIs, so every integration had to be built at the seam
- •No e-commerce capability at all, while competitors were already established online
- •Paper purchase-order workflows embedded in how the whole company operated
- •No customer data foundation for personalization or loyalty to build on
- •An IT team skilled in legacy operations, new to cloud, CI/CD, and agile delivery
Technical Approach
We ran the program as strangler-fig modernization with enablement built in: new services grew around the legacy core until it could be retired, and client engineers were embedded in every workstream from the first sprint.
- Wrapped the legacy inventory core with an API layer so new services could ship before it was replaced
- Built the omnichannel commerce platform: storefront, order management, and store-pickup flows
- Stood up a customer data platform unifying purchase history for personalization and loyalty
- Migrated 20+ internal systems to cloud-native services on a Terraform-defined AWS foundation
- Paired client engineers into every workstream and ran structured training through the program
How the Build Ran
Discovery & Roadmap
6 weeksAudited the technology estate, interviewed stakeholders across the business, and sequenced a phased transformation roadmap.
Foundation & Architecture
12 weeksEstablished the AWS foundation, CI/CD pipelines, and microservices architecture, and wrapped the legacy core with APIs.
Build & Migrate
24 weeksBuilt the commerce platform, migrated internal systems in increments, and launched the customer data platform.
Optimize & Hand Over
6 weeksTuned performance, completed the training program, and transitioned operations to the client's team.
Key Features in This Build
Omnichannel Commerce
Online storefront unified with in-store inventory and pickup flows
Cloud-Native Core
Microservices on AWS replacing the legacy back office incrementally
Customer Data Platform
Unified purchase history powering personalization and loyalty
Team Enablement
Client engineers trained and embedded in every workstream
Build Scope
Everything in this scope was designed and delivered over the program, and we can walk you through the platforms, migrations, and enablement live.
20+
Systems modernized
Legacy tools replaced with cloud-native services
4
Program phases
Roadmap, foundation, build & migrate, handover
25+
Engineers enabled
Client staff trained on the delivered stack
CI/CD
Release cadence
Pipelines and IaC replacing manual releases
Technology Stack
frontend
- React
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Storybook
backend
- Node.js
- NestJS
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Elasticsearch
cloud
- AWS ECS
- AWS RDS
- CloudFront
- S3
- Lambda
devops
- Terraform
- GitHub Actions
- Docker
- Datadog
- PagerDuty
Designed to Extend
Extensions this architecture is built to support:
- A mobile app with AR product visualization on the same APIs
- Demand forecasting feeding automated purchasing
- Marketplace capabilities with third-party seller onboarding
- Store-performance analytics on the shared event stream
Want to See It Running?
Ask us to walk you through this build live, and to map the approach onto your product.
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