Leading global logistics software company, Alpega Group, helps coordinate the transportation of freight in 80 countries. Working with 80,000 carriers and 200,000 members, it is a huge and complex operation that relies on the company’s Transport Management System (TMS). So, when the company decided to implement a new container management system built on Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, it meant changing the infrastructure that underpins the entire business. That change has facilitated greater agility, flexibility, and stability for Alpega’s Smart Booking system, allowing the company to respond to demand and scale its operations accordingly. This transformation is helping Alpega to optimize freight transportation and create a more sustainability within the industry.
“In our industry, the system cannot fail. If it does, you will see the impact on motorways across the world,” says Jonathan Agneessens, Head of IT Infrastructure at Alpega Group. The Transport Management System (TMS) is critical to the global logistics software company’s operations.
“For example, a system failure while booking a time slot to load or unload at a port, can cause huge delays and queues as trucks try to get in the port,” Agneessens continues. “That is exactly what a reliable system should avoid.”
Alpega works continuously to provide the most reliable solutions and avoid these types of issues. “Our reputation is at stake every day,” says Laura Sivu, Sourcing and Procurement Manager at Alpega. “We deal with industries where the availability and well-functioning of the system that handles their logistics processes is key.”
Providing support that is always available
With over 80,000 carriers transporting goods across and between more than 80 countries worldwide, Alpega Group is a leading global logistics software company that offers end-to-end solutions covering all transport needs. Over 500 in-house experts provide 24/7 support to Alpega’s 200,000 software and services users.
At the heart of the company’s operations is Alpega TMS, a cloud-based software solution that connects manufacturers to a broad network of logistics providers, digitizing complex supply chain processes. The company’s TMS sets an industry standard, having been listed on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems for the past nine years.
Ensuring the smooth and continuous running of its TMS is a top priority for Alpega. The company has enlisted the support of Microsoft and open-source specialist Red Hat to remodel the infrastructure that underlies its system, allowing Alpega to create a more agile, flexible and secure TMS.
“With Azure Red Hat OpenShift, whenever something goes wrong or misbehaves, the system is able to repair itself,” says Agneessens. “It is helping us a lot.”
In the transport industry, providers need to be a step ahead to avoid mistakes. “Every transport company needs to have strict planning to make sure that goods are being shifted from the factory to a warehouse and then to the customer in an optimal way,” explains Agneessens.
“That's where we come in,” he says. “The Smart Planning module in the TMS helps to make sure that transport orders are being processed in a more automated and structured way. This means the operator doesn't need to make phone calls to make sure that everything is in order. We have a whole system of different tools that allows every company to have its goods shipped by a particular carrier to a specific warehouse, at a specific time."
Underpinning that cloud-based system is a complex network of microservices that operationalize each step of the end-to-end digital service that Alpega provides to its customers.
“It is crucial that every component of our system is always available for our customers to use,” says Agneessens. “Otherwise our customers may lose not only time but also money.“
Alpega chose Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, an open-source container orchestration platform that helps smaller microservices to run smoothly and operate together.
“The infrastructure that supports our system is crucial to keeping our business alive.”
Scaling up efficiency with Azure Red Hat OpenShift
“In the old days, you would have a server and you'd have an operating system on it,” says Joerg Heinen, VP of IT at Alpega Group. “If it failed, you would have to either fix it immediately or set up a new server with the operating system and then put the application on top of that, which would take you hours, days, ages. With the solution we have now, it's much easier than it was before with fixed on-premises solutions,” Heinen says.
Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift is a scheduling platform that runs on top of Kubernetes. So rather than businesses needing to manage the orchestration of containers themselves, the management can be supported by two expert partners, Microsoft and Red Hat.
“You need to see Azure Red Hat OpenShift as a big block that a lot of smaller blocks feed off,” says Agneessens. “So, when we see that the load needs to be increased by two, three, four times, then the system can scale to accommodate that load. We’ve provided a huge amount of workforce to all the different microsystems that we run, and then Azure Red Hat OpenShift decides, according to our parameters, what every microservice should do and how they should behave.”
“If we’re getting a high pressure on CPU or memory, then you need to spin up another one, and another one, and another one, and another one,” Agneessens adds. “This allows us to be agile, according to the demands of the day. Right before Christmas, for example, we have a lot of demand, a lot of work, so a lot of workforce needs to be available. In that moment, Azure Red Hat OpenShift scales up with what the system needs to accommodate the increase in requests.”
The system is also able to repair itself. “When a microservice isn’t working right, the system detects this according to our parameters and then fixes the problem by restarting another microservice, or killing the malfunctioning one off,” says Agneessens. “And it does all this without our customers seeing anything; everything is taken care of behind the scenes.”
Ultimately, this solution is giving Alpega much more flexibility. “We can play with the system,” says Agneessens. “We can upscale, we can downscale. Whenever we have a bug that we need to fix, we can put all the traffic to other nodes that are still working perfectly fine. It really is helping us tremendously.”
Benefiting from a jointly managed platform
By running Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Alpega benefits from the expertise of both Microsoft and Red Hat. “We were a little unsure how this collaboration would work,” says Agneessens. “And there were some growing pains at the outset to make sure that our system was working smoothly.”
Since then, Alepga’s system has been even more stable and reliable. “But I'm very pleased about the way that Alpega can work with both Microsoft and Red Hat now to continue to ensure the stability of our system,” he continues. “Although rare, we still encounter some issues with the setup, because nothing is ideal in IT—it can always be improved, it can always be better. But it is a good solution for us, and I am happy that when we do have an issue on the stability of our cluster, Microsoft and Red Hat can jump in to get our platform stable again—they are very quick in their responses.”
“Another cool thing is that they're linked,” adds Agneessens. “Often, Red Hat monitors our clusters in the background and applies hot fixes or even restarts the master node if needed. So, the two companies are really growing closer to each other and have a good collaboration.”
Optimizing the industry for a more sustainable society
Despite Alpega’s emphasis on using the latest, cutting-edge technology to run its systems, transportation is still an industry with some way to go on the journey to digital transformation.
“It wasn’t long ago that some of the biggest carriers in the business were using fax machines,” says Heinen. “And even now, if a truck is stopped somewhere on the motorway, they will have to provide paperwork.
Alepga is helping to drive the industry forward. “So, our aim now, as a company, is to work towards a much more digital model for the entire industry, which will help to optimize the freight business overall. Having the infrastructure, we now have, hugely helps us to facilitate that.”
In working to create a digitized model for the industry, Alpega will be helping to create a more sustainable industry too.
“Normally, a truck goes from A to B, empties its load and then returns to A with an empty truck,” says Heinen. “With our systems, we will be able to optimize that so they can take a truckload going back too. And if we can optimize the freight business by even 20 or 30 percent, well, that's a lot of CO2 we can reduce, which will help society in general. All while making our customers more sustainable carriers. That is our vision.”
“With Azure RedHat OpenShift, whenever something goes wrong or misbehaves, the system is able to repair itself. It is helping us a lot. ”
Jonathan Agneessens, Head of IT Infrastructure, AlpegaGroup
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