Four apps, moved onto their servers
A Singapore fleet-leasing company inside a larger finance group, with a vehicle auction, a customer portal and two websites the group wanted inside its network.
/work/fleet-portalsCame in under strain
- System
- Vehicle auction, fleet customer portal, two websites
- Ask
- Move every app onto the group's own servers and database
- Stack
- Linux, PHP, MySQL to Windows, IIS, SQL Server
- Region
- Singapore
The piece A wall plate with four bars driven through it and four rivets on its face: four apps moved inside, four years of security tests.
- 4appson the client's own servers
- 4yearsof group security tests answered
- 21weeksthe portal's build plan
- 2014 to 2022one unbroken relationship
The ask
Move the auction and both websites onto the group's own servers and database. Build the new customer portal for that stack.
The real problem
In 2016 the group wanted the apps off servers we hosted and onto its own, inside its network.
Once inside, every app would face the group's own penetration tests each year.
Our server, then theirs
- Idle
- Live
- Strain
- Fail
BeforeThe auction and both websites on a server we hosted, outside the group's network, with its servers and security tests waiting inside.
AfterFour apps on the group's servers, each moved through a lab first, with a private API between the auction and the website.
What we built
We moved one app at a time. We rebuilt the auction as a standalone app with a private API to the website, then converted both websites to the same stack.
We built the customer portal for the group's stack from the start. A daily check finds newly activated contracts and invites each customer to register, confirmed by email and a one-time SMS code.
How we made it hold
A lab came first, every time: in July 2015 for the auction process, then for each server move before it reached production.
Backstage The decisions behind the build, and the hardest problem
Decisions
A lab before production, every time.
The auction process, then each server move, ran end to end on the group's stack first.
Rebuild the auction as a standalone app with a private API.
It could live on the group's servers and still talk to the website in both directions.
Build the portal for the group's stack from day one.
It never had to move.
Ruled out
Hard-coding the auction's display rules.
The rules kept moving through 2015, so each became a setting staff control without a new release.
The hardest problem
Moving the websites and the auction onto a different web server and database with nothing lost on the way: the data, the content and every permalink, each checked in a lab before it went live on the client's servers.
The difference
- All four apps run in the client's own environment: the auction, the portal and two websites.
- The group's security tests in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, each answered with our fix report.
- One unbroken relationship from November 2014 to an extension in August 2022.
