Farmasi migrates its data center to Azure with a vision of inspiring continuity

As a company growing by 200% every year, Farmasi is now more ready than ever for new targets and markets with its technology company FarmasiX. Reaching a peak in sales volume during the pandemic and penetrating two new markets on average every year, Farmasi is now more agile and operations run smooth and uninterrupted thanks to the boost offered by cloud.

Previously using local servers, the company migrated its entire environment to .NET.Core and restructured its database using SQL Server and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Realizing a comprehensive digitalization that offers a uniform experience regardless of user location, the company has already completed its transition in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Farmasi employs almost all of Azure's services suit and is currently making use of Microsoft's DevOps structure. The company, which has a state-of-the-art structure running on Docker containers, works with Microsoft Dynamics integrations on the DevOps side. Running on 200 machines on the Azure side in the second quarter of 2022, the company is expected to get this figure close to 300 next year.

All for a seamless, fast, and safe environment

The project team notes that in sales channels that require very large scaling, they reach close to 25 to 30 million single-users globally on the last two days of the month. In this channel, where users purchase products, every minute is critical to make sure all leads conclude in actual sales. One of the most influential factors for Farmasi for choosing Azure is the guaranteed continuity. In such an environment, where scaling is quite difficult due to instant exit of visitors, key element for the company is ‘continuity’. Noting that continuity is of great importance in such projects, Latif Vardar, FarmasiX Global Information Technologies Director, emphasizes that the business  cannot afford any interruptions.

Leveraging its in-team knowledge and software experience, FarmasiX performed all processes during the transition internally. Pointing out that they completed the project in 2 years, which for many tech businesses can take up to 5 years, Vardar notes that during the pandemic, hard working teams did an excellent job in performing the coding in a year, and then moved on to the completion of the distribution to Azure. Using 90% of Azure services suit, the company now runs on Azure in 29 countries across 4 continents.

Azure - from production to sales

Farmasi also employs Azure technologies across all its production stages out of Ömerli, Istanbul. In addition to production applications, the company also manages its websites and database entirely on Azure. Running on Azure end-to-end, Farmasi uses Microsoft products from production to inventory management, packaging, and logistics.

Ranking 25th in the global MLM (multi-level marketing) industry and 5th in terms of turnover, the company grows its ecosystem 2 to 2.5 times every year. Farmasi, the first company in Türkiye to switch to fully automatic packaging, has a daily shipping volume of 100,000 units in Türkiye. Using Microsoft products simultaneously on both the factories and sales fronts, Farmasi displays all production line steps in the form of Power BI reports. Applications written in-house are executed on C#, and SCADA applications are executed on .Net and visualized in Power BI. All packaging applications are run on applications written on .Net while product inventory is managed using Microsoft Dynamics.

The future is in the cloud, software and people

Farmasi's investment in people and technology also includes Microsoft technologies. Using the concept of 'human value' instead of human resources, the company gives weight to in-house training by leveraging technology as a 'constructive assistant'. Kicking off Blazor training sessions, the team is preparing to migrate some of the applications to this technology. Aiming for a structure using Docker containers 100%, Farmasi's future plans also include Kubernetes and Microsoft services.

The company is happy with Azure's location-based working discipline and predicts that they will focus more on performance with the addition of new features to web sales portals in the coming period. Farmasi also works at full speed on developing marketing methods for enhanced visitor retention on sales channels.

Security at every step with up-to-date technologies

Implementing the first DDoS project with Microsoft in Türkiye, Farmasi sets a striking example across all segments in the MEA region. In line with this vision, the company invests heavily in infrastructure security and migrated many services such as Redis and CDMN to Azure Paas services.

Project manager Latif Vardar states that they established a global infrastructure in line with Farmasi's global growth and notes that Farmasi`s need for an infrastructure that responds to an effective and global data center is well met by Azure. Vardar adds that Farmasi is ready to take its vision of continuity further with steps that will add strength to innovation thanks to its seamless, flexible, scalable, and secure infrastructure.