Overview

Established in 2005, Razer is one of the most recognized ecosystems for gaming hardware and software across the globe. Razer is for gamers, by gamers.

Experiencing astronomical growth in a short period of time due to its award-winning hardware and software that supports 60M users, Razer knew the need for a scalable and high performing digital commerce solution.

 

Challenge

Facing several vital user experience issues and lost revenue due to site downtime, Razer came to Ultra Commerce to take advantage of their expertise in SAP Hybris and AWS.

As one of the world’s largest online stores for gamers, Razer frequently has large promotional events, new product releases, and gaming events that require a highly scalable platform to service large user volumes. An additional complication related to the overall stability and performance of the site was frequent DDoS attacks.

These capabilities were so vital to Razer’s business that a key requirement for Ultra Commerce’s Proof of Concept (PoC) engagement for Razer was to demonstrate SmartStack’s ability to handle scale during both scheduled and unscheduled peaks.

Razer is a highly innovative organization with rapidly evolving products and technology, requiring frequent updates to their product catalog and offerings. Traditionally this resulted in a 3-4 hour outage each month while Razer executed the SAP Hybris System Update task. These down for maintenance windows created a significant challenge since each update rendered the site unable to transact business, resulting in a negative impact on revenues and customer satisfaction.

Razer needed an SAP Hybris solution that would address current challenges while supporting future growth. To begin a new, more effective solution, Razer required assistance to migrate their digital commerce infrastructure as quickly and with as little disruption to the business as possible.

 

Solution

In under 50 days (April 25, 2018, to June 13, 2018), Ultra Commerce migrated Razer’s digital commerce infrastructure including a database re-platform to AWS Aurora Database (which comes standard with SmartStack) leveraging the AWS Schema Conversion Tool and Database Migration Service.

Once the migration was complete, Ultra Commerce utilized their platform on AWS to provide a guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 99.99% uptime. SmartStack, built to AWS Well Architected specifications, provided much needed stability, scalability and performance improvements in line with Razer’s workload dynamics.

Continuing to make the most of AWS offerings, Ultra Commerce utilized AWS Elasticache with Memcached and SmartStack to deliver session persistence. In the unlikely event of infrastructure failure, SmartStack ensures Razer’s customers won’t experience any session-related issues, such as their cart being destroyed, or being forcefully logged out.

Ultra Commerce also utilized the SAP Hybris Rolling Update process to perform zero-downtime updates during Razer’s frequent upgrades. Rolling Updates work by cloning the original SAP Hybris typesystem, redirecting the user to the original version while code updates run in parallel on the cloned version, leaving no interference to the end user (see graphic below). As demonstrated in the graphic below, an example of a System Update that requires new code could be a new payment method, such as cash card acceptance, or a new attribute to a pre-existing product, such as a mouse’s logo.

Outcome

To date with Ultra Commerce, Razer has experienced minimal downtime with no breach to the 99.99% availability agreement since go-live. Deployments now take less than 30 minutes with no downtime instead of the original 3+ hours with downtime. The ability to keep the site updated with the latest and greatest products and offers while processing orders at any time of the day has increased Razer’s ability to be competitive and differentiated in the marketplace as a true global 24/7/365 business.

“We can now execute site maintenance without incurring any downtime. This is a big deal!”
– Patricia Liu, Chief of Staff, Razer

Razer now enjoys a higher performing and scalable solution with greater availability for their online store with the help of Ultra Commerce powered by AWS to deliver the SAP Hybris application. This has allowed Razer to make the most of their digital commerce investment and give their customers the experience they expect from the world leader gamer brand.