FEATURE : AUTOMATION
performance and usability improvements to Porsche Informatik ’ s online car configurator , ordering software and service queues .
Automating customer domain management and migration for 3,000-plus websites
“ We were a global company challenged by performance bottlenecks , especially outside Europe , because we were streaming from a European server ,” said Günter Schulmeister , Porsche Informatik ’ s Cloud Transformation Lead . “ Using Cloudflare to store and stream content on the global network , our partners
BY CACHING OUR PUBLIC ACCESS CONTENT ON CLOUDFLARE WE HAVE GAINED THE CAPACITY TO ONBOARD NEW SERVICES .
in countries like Chile , Malaysia and Japan enjoy the greatest gains – not only do they see far better website performance , they are better protected against cybersecurity attacks .”
“ Cloudflare reduced the loading time of our webpages by 40 %,” said Zangl . “ Having a globally distributed assets cache , using Workers to power our applications , and avoiding bottlenecks with smart routing and load balancer makes our websites faster and more reliable .”
Reducing bandwidth consumption by 95 % and improving server performance on the global network
Cloudflare ’ s connectivity cloud also reduces the load on Porsche Informatik ’ s core data centres , both in the cloud and on-premises . According to Zangl , the global network now handles 95 % of Porsche Informatik ’ s public traffic . Besides the cost savings , Cloudflare frees up enough headroom on Porsche Informatik ’ s local servers to efficiently fulfill other business objectives .
“ By caching our public access content on Cloudflare we have gained the capacity to onboard new services and tolerate greater loads without over-provisioning costly bandwidth ,” said Daniel Ivanovski , Systems Engineer , Porsche Informatik . “ That improves the performance of our internal and back-office applications and allows us to manage our cloud services more cost-effectively .”
With all of the Porsche Holding ’ s and the Volkswagen Group ’ s dealer , financing and brand websites under its care , Porsche Informatik needed to find an efficient method of maintaining DNS , managing security certificates and migrating customer websites into the cloud . It was a daunting task , exacerbated by the fact that most of the domains were independently owned by subsidiaries . Using Cloudflare SSL for SaaS and the Cloudflare API , Zangl ’ s team has streamlined the cumbersome process .
“ We automate the website migration and SSL certificate maintenance process – I love it ,” said Zangl . “ Using Cloudflare API integration and an Everything as Code ( EaC ) approach to manage infrastructures , GitLab , and merge requests to define and delegate which websites need moving and provisioning , we have shared the burden , moving 3,000 websites using customer-facing teams across the organisation . Beyond making sure that changes are correct and well-documented , my people are free to focus on exploring other technologies .”
With the sites live in the cloud , SSL for SaaS automates the certificate management lifecycle and simplifies site maintenance and configuration , ensuring the web portfolio remains secure and up-to-date .
Meeting data localisation and international regulatory requirements
As an automotive commerce industry institution that both sells vehicles and provides banking services , Porsche Holding Salzburg operates in a highly regulated environment . As a result , the company ’ s cloud migration presented Porsche Informatik with challenges specific to the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) and other regulatory bodies .
“ We are a European company and most of our customers are in Europe , so the GDPR dictates very specifically where and how we can store corporate and user data ,” said Schulmeister . “ Cloudflare provides its enterprise partners with the right toolset to promote GDPR compliance .”
Using the Cloudflare Data Localization Suite , Porsche Informatik maintains rigorous , auditable control over its data , determining precisely how and where it stores , transports and encrypts information . Cloudflare also empowers the company to establish business rules for deploying region-specific workers to execute its serverless applications and specify the
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