Our client aimed to develop an online marketplace for building materials, designed to manage intricate online transactions and ensure a top-notch global user experience, supported by stringent security and exceptional performance standards.
This case study details how ABCloudz utilized Amazon CloudFront, coupled with Lambda@Edge for dynamic content delivery. By deploying CloudFront, we significantly reduced web application load times, which is directly linked to improved user satisfaction and higher conversion rates. This deployment addressed key technical challenges, such as high traffic management and advanced security protocols, and facilitated swift user access from various global locations, setting a new benchmark in the industry.
Challenge
Our customer had a vision to build an online B2C marketplace that facilitates the listing and selling of goods by a broad ecosystem of sellers in the regional and global construction markets. This vision came with its own set of technical challenges:
- Ensuring high performance and scalability to handle fluctuating traffic patterns.
- Providing robust security measures to protect against data breaches, unauthorized access, and other web vulnerabilities.
- Creating a seamless user experience across global markets.
The solution required leveraging advanced cloud technologies and architectural practices, with a particular focus on maximizing the benefits of Amazon CloudFront.
Solution
To meet these challenges, ABCloudz developed a sophisticated architecture, utilizing AWS services to ensure scalability, security, and performance. The solution was centered around the four pillars of CloudFront:
- Ensuring the marketplace and its products remain accessible everywhere, regardless of traffic patterns.
- Protecting the original servers with efficient caching to maintain accessibility.
- Leveraging CloudFront to keep data close to customers, enabling fast and personalized responses worldwide.
- Continuous monitoring: Utilizing CloudFront logs for monitoring and business analytics to inform product and feature updates.
Marketplace platform architecture overview
The architecture of the developed marketplace is meticulously designed to ensure scalability, security, and high performance. Below, we delve into the specifics of each layer and component that come together to form the backbone of the marketplace.
Amazon CloudFront for global content delivery
Global distribution: ABCloudz team utilized Amazon CloudFront as a global content delivery network (CDN) to ensure that the marketplace’s web content is delivered with low latency and high transfer speeds to users worldwide. CloudFront’s extensive network of edge locations plays a critical role in caching content close to end users, reducing the load on original servers and speeding up the overall user experience.
Security at the edge: Amazon CloudFront Integration with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) at the CloudFront edge locations protects the marketplace against common web exploits that could affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. This setup enables real-time inspection of incoming traffic for conditions such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting and allows for immediate blocking of malicious requests.
Database layer: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Managed database service: We utilized Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, that offers a scalable and secure relational database service for storing and retrieving data necessary for the marketplace’s operation. This managed service simplifies database administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups, ensuring that the database layer is both resilient and performant.
Scalability and reliability: The Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL provides easy scalability options to handle growth in the marketplace’s transactions and user base. Automated backups, database snapshots, and multi-AZ (Availability Zone) deployments enhance the reliability and availability of the database layer.
Backend layer: Node.js on Amazon ECS
Containerized microservices: We developed back end with Node.js and deployed as containerized microservices on Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS). This setup enables scalable and secure execution of the marketplace’s business logic, including user authentication, integration with external services, and processing of complex transactions.
Scalable Deployment: Amazon ECS facilitates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It supports auto-scaling based on specified metrics, ensuring that the backend layer can dynamically adjust to varying loads without manual intervention.
Front-end layer: Angular hosted on Amazon S3 and accelerated by CloudFront
Responsive and fast user interface: We built frontend using Angular, creating a responsive and engaging user interface that adapts to various devices and screen sizes. Hosting the frontend on Amazon S3and delivering it through CloudFront ensures that static assets are served quickly and efficiently to users globally.
Security and Compliance
AWS identity and access management (IAM): Our expert team used IAM to manage access to customer services and resources securely. Through fine-grained access controls, we ensure that only authorized and authenticated users can access the marketplace admin panel and perform operations on their infrastructure.
Encryption and compliance: All data in transit and at rest is encrypted using industry-standard protocols. The architecture adheres to stringent compliance standards, ensuring that sensitive customer and transaction data are protected according to global security regulations.
Monitoring and operational insights
Amazon CloudWatch and DataDog: We built a comprehensive monitoring system that gives operational insights into the marketplace’s performance and health. Amazon CloudWatch offers metrics, logs, and alarms to monitor the marketplace’s resources, while DataDog provides advanced analytics and visualization tools for real-time monitoring and troubleshooting.
This architecture ensures that the online marketplace is not only capable of handling high volumes of transactions and data but also remains secure, performant, and scalable as the business grows. Through the strategic use of AWS services, our customer delivers a seamless and efficient online marketplace experience to users and sellers in the building materials industry.
Key benefits
Key benefits of our solution include scalability through auto-scaling and serverless technologies, robust security measures via AWS WAF and Lambda@Edge, and exceptional performance and reliability using managed services like Amazon RDS and Amazon ECS.
The cost-efficiency of ABCloudz solution is achieved by leveraging these managed services and dynamically scaling resources according to demand, ensuring an efficient and effective platform for the customer’s marketplace operations.
Results
The integration of AWS CloudFront and related AWS services has significantly impacted the marketplace’s operational efficiency and market reach. The initial investment in AWS setup and development was offset by lower operational and maintenance costs compared to on-premises solutions. Managed services reduced the need for extensive in-house operations teams, and the auto-scaling feature ensured cost savings by adjusting resources to match demand. Indirect benefits, such as rapid deployment, global reach, and enhanced security, contributed to a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a superior value proposition for customer’s business over time.
