Unixus Solutions Leverages Microsoft Azure to Great Effect

 |   Dashika Gnaneswaran, Communications Lead, Microsoft Malaysia

Unixus Solutions is an e-commerce and logistics company committed to simplifying and innovating logistical solutions. Since 2010, Unixus Solutions has integrated more than 30 shipping modules for different logistics and postal carriers worldwide which, in turn, allows services to be provided to 200 destinations worldwide.

The key differentiator for Unixus Solution is its strength in bridging logistics, e-commerce and technology, allowing it to offer customers an innovative and effective solution for the e-commerce and logistics industries. Its customers range from the logistics and courier Industry, freight forwarding companies, e-commerce platforms and SME Retailers.

From its inception, Unixus has consistently delivered in quality and service, thanks largely to their willingness and ability to rapidly update their solutions and uptake new technology to stay ahead of the competitive curve.

However, like most other industries, the transportation and logistics sector has been faced with immense change that is disrupting industry stakeholders – bringing with it both risk and opportunity. To that end, Unixus found itself in the market for a scalable, reliable system that would allow its team to explore the use of modern business solutions such as data analytics, BI, and blockchain technology in order to deliver more benefits to customers.

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They found that their existing IT set-up was incapable of meeting these developing needs. Being hosted on a local environment, the solution they had been using was vulnerable to hacking and cyber intrusion, causing a potential major flaw in their cybersecurity barriers. The amount of time spent trying to find and patch issues caused team productivity to fall, taking focus away from critically important company goals.

Not only was this unsafe, it was costly. Being a start-up, the race was on to find a secure, trusted cloud-based solution that would be able to grow with the company.

Microsoft Azure: The Jack-of-all-Trades of IT solutions

Following an in-depth look into available IT solutions, Unixus decided to go with Microsoft Azure. With the full support of the Microsoft and Rhipe teams, Unixus identified three key areas for review and improvement.

First, Unixus required a redesign of its Azure Backup and security around core Web and Microsoft SQL workloads to ensure better data protection for customers and stakeholders. Second, a full review of business flows, to eliminate potential limitations and blockages in the future. And finally, to fully migrate to a serverless infrastructure by migrating to Azure SQL Service, Azure Web App and Azure Automation.

With these key goals in mind, Unixus rolled out Azure across its operations – and found themselves reaping the benefits soon after. They found that their heavy data transactions – which had always overwhelmed their previous system – was easily dealt with through Azure and its serverless architecture that allowed them to deal with the daily mountains of data both efficiently and affordably. The serverless architecture also meant that there was no need for the purchase, maintenance or setup of expensive hardware; a stark contrast to physical servers and data centres. Unixus was also able to offer its customers greater value-add with the addition of specific, actionable business insights that they could use to make informed decisions.

The use of Azure also allowed Unixus to better meet their customers’ growing needs, scaling up or down to match their customers’ demands. When transactions increased seasonally, Unixus was easily able to scale its infrastructure up in a short amount of time without accruing a huge bill. Azure’s cloud-based server also allowed Unixus to deploy its solutions in other countries without its team ever having to physically travel overseas, saving the business thousands in travel costs and team productivity.

Unixus also saw the query response times increase by 200%, thanks to the use of Azure Table Storage. Through it, Unixus was able to store its logs, images and GPS data quickly and cost-effectively, allowing its customers to access the data they needed much faster than before.

With the time and money freed up by using Azure, along with the new capabilities the solution provided, Unixus was able to produce more innovative offerings for their customers, increasing their profile and establishing Unixus as a fast-growing start-up. The speed and tooling offered by Azure allowed Unixus to develop solutions for the challenges presented to them by customers, vastly increasing customer satisfaction.

Planning for the Future

Moving forward, Unixus has plans to expand its business offerings together with Microsoft, using Azure to engineer ever-more innovative solutions in order to reach out to new customers.

For a small company, Unixus has big plans – and a path forward to achieve them. Using Microsoft Azure, Unixus is optimistic about its growth, and envisions a rapid expansion of their services and offerings throughout APAC. With Microsoft – and the infinitely scalable, flexible and secure Microsoft Azure – at its side, Unixus is primed to succeed.