Halfords delivers customer-first experiences with cloud
The UK-based retailer partnered with TCS to migrate its critical applications from on-premises data centers to Azure Cloud.
Industry
Retail
Omnichannel CX and Intelligent Innovation – The Future of Retail
Services
Cloud
Enabling Enterprise Agility & Resilience with a Robust Cloud Strategy
Microsoft Business Solutions
TCS and Microsoft Cloud: Driving Business Transformation
Highlights
- With costs rising and the need to bolster consumer confidence, UK-based retailer Halfords was looking for ways to simplify the customer journey, while making its products and services affordable.
- Taking a ‘mobile first, cloud first' approach, Halfords collaborated with TCS to consolidate and migrate its critical applications to Microsoft Azure.
- Halfords is all set for growth with this cloud transformation that promises 36% cost savings over the next five years, among other benefits.
Challenge
Halfords decided to go ‘mobile first, cloud first' to simplify the customer journey.
As UK’s leading motoring and cycling services provider with 400 stores and 650 garages, Halfords Group is grounded in the physical world. Yet, the retailer has a desire to provide services and experiences that connect both the physical and digital.
“Our priority is to offer products and services that customers need at affordable prices and make the digital journey as simple as possible for them,” says Jo Hartley, Chief Financial Officer, Halfords. Taking this customer-centric approach, Halfords adopted a ‘mobile first, cloud first' agenda.
“We're really passionate about bridging the digital and physical worlds, particularly in the services area, which is a key part of our business strategy,” says Neil Holden, Chief Information Officer, Halfords. That’s why the retailer wanted to exit traditional, on-premises data centers and migrate its critical applications to the cloud.
Another important factor was that Halfords’ multiple servers and outdated infrastructure was proving to be costly. The legacy infrastructure was becoming inefficient, while technology upgrades were adding to costs. Multiple data centers and numerous vendor support models also made it difficult to coordinate between in-house and vendor teams to synchronize activities.
Solution
TCS helped Halfords migrate its critical applications to Azure with an optimized cloud migration strategy.
As an incumbent partner managing Halfords’ infrastructure and business applications, TCS proposed a consolidated hybrid cloud model to migrate specific on-premises applications to Microsoft Azure.
Halfords’ existing Azure structure and business requirements were incorporated into foundation planning by the migration team. TCS implemented the plan using infrastructure-as-code (IaC) in foundation build and migration, leveraging Azure DevOps and continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. The applications were then rehosted using Azure Migrate to ensure minimum dependency on the application support team.
For some of the critical in-house legacy applications, neither direct rehosting nor re-platforming was possible because the applications were at their end of life and were not supported by new technology. The migration team first completed in-place OS upgrades for these applications and thereafter rehosted them to Azure Cloud.
For some applications, we made the migration to an all-Azure environment complete by moving their SQL Server to Azure SQL, a fully managed platform-as-a-service (Paas) database engine.
Benefits
By partnering with TCS, Halfords is all set for growth, with a cloud-first approach.
Halfords is poised for growth with the benefits realized from the cloud transformation journey, some of which are:
- Cost savings of 36% over the next five years.
- Seamless and frictionless experience for both customers and employees, in-store and online.
- Increased security with Azure Firewall, which is configured for Azure data traffic.
- Enhanced Azure-native monitoring.
What the client says
“The key developments that have strengthened our business are really being able to partner with TCS and Microsoft together. That's helped to strengthen the business case and reduce capital expenditure. In addition, being able to align and optimize usage has enabled us to reduce operating costs far beyond those that you normally see in traditional hosting solutions.”
Jo Hartley
Chief Financial Officer, Halfords
“The most pleasing aspect of working on this project in a three-way collaboration with TCS and Microsoft was really the breadth and depth that TCS brought to the table and their expertise within the Microsoft Azure platform. "
Neil Holden
Chief Information Officer, Halfords