Aramex ships in Rackspace Technology to accelerate datacentre downsizing and move to AWS cloud

Dubai-based international delivery firm Aramex is leaning on Rackspace Technology to support it through the shutdown of its on-premise datacentres and continued migration to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.

Aramex claims to have been responsible for shipping more than 103 million items across the globe last year, and is in the midst of a wide-scale digital transformation effort to streamline it operations, particularly where its last-mile delivery processes are concerned.

“This approach has significant benefits, and that’s why we consider ourselves a technology-driven enterprise, selling transportation and logistics solutions without owning heavy assets,” the company stated in its 2019 Sustainability report.

The push to downsize its reliance on in-house datacentres is in-keeping with that strategy, and has seen the firm take steps to grow its cloud footprint since 2019 by investing in the creation of an AWS-powered data lake.

The setup is reported to be the biggest data lake of its kind in the Middle East, and is designed to host the company’s big data infrastructure, which makes use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate insights to inform its digital transformation efforts.

The company has been working with Rackspace during the deployment of this data lake, with the managed cloud services firm claiming the move has already created scaling-related cost savings for Aramex, despite the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic generating a 30-40% increase in e-commerce volumes.

“Our journey to becoming cloud native is vital to the future growth and innovation of the business. Modernising our core landscape is more important than ever before, given the current industry dynamics which are fuelled by the consistent growth of e-commerce,” said Aramex chief digital officer, Mohammed Sleeq.  

“We embarked on a pivotal shift of our IT environment and the collaboration between our internal team and that of AWS and Rackspace Technology is critical to the success of the programme.”

With the data lake now in place, Rackspace and Aramex are now turning their attention to modernising more than 60 of the company’s existing applications to make them cloud-ready too.

Mahesh Desai, chief relationship officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Rackspace Technology, said Aramex is already reaping the rewards of the technology partnership between the two firms.

“Aramex has already noticed such important benefits from our work together, which is great validation for the efforts of all involved. The ongoing work will further enhance its market leading position allowing for even more innovation and agility,” Desai added.