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AZURE Manufacturing Brazil

Digital Transformation and Application Modernization

Modernization of legacy ERP integrations and shop floor systems to cloud-native microservices on Azure, enabling real-time production visibility and 60% faster time-to-market for new features.

Duration12 months
Company Size2,000-5,000 employees
SPKR Team8 specialists
Real-time
Production data visibility (vs. 24h)
60%
Faster time-to-market for features
85%
Automated test coverage achieved
12
Microservices extracted from monolith
8
Plants connected to unified platform
4 devs
Team size able to maintain system (vs. 1)

Challenge

A mid-sized manufacturing company with operations across 8 plants in Brazil struggled with fragmented IT systems. Their 12-year-old custom ERP integrations relied on overnight batch processing, preventing real-time visibility into production metrics. Development cycles for new features took 6+ months due to monolithic architecture and lack of automated testing.

Key Challenges:

  • Legacy VB.NET monolith with 2M+ lines of code
  • Overnight batch processing causing 24h data latency
  • No automated testing - 100% manual QA process
  • 6-8 month development cycles for new features
  • Siloed data across plants with inconsistent reporting
  • Single developer who understood the legacy codebase

Solution

We implemented a strangler fig pattern to gradually decompose the monolith into microservices. Using Azure Event Hubs for real-time data streaming and Azure Kubernetes Service for container orchestration, we built a modern integration layer that could coexist with legacy systems during transition. Azure DevOps provided end-to-end CI/CD with quality gates.

What We Implemented:

  • Strangler fig pattern for gradual monolith decomposition
  • Event-driven architecture with Azure Event Hubs
  • Microservices on AKS with .NET 8 and minimal APIs
  • Azure API Management for unified API gateway
  • Real-time dashboards with Azure Synapse and Power BI
  • Comprehensive CI/CD with Azure DevOps and quality gates

Solution Architecture

Component 1
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with node auto-scaling
Component 2
Azure Event Hubs for real-time event streaming (10K events/sec)
Component 3
Azure SQL Database with read replicas for reporting
Component 4
Azure Cosmos DB for IoT sensor data (sub-ms latency)
Component 5
Azure API Management for external and internal APIs
Component 6
Azure Synapse Analytics for production analytics
Component 7
Azure Active Directory B2C for partner authentication
Component 8
Azure Front Door for global load balancing

Infrastructure as Code

BicepTerraformAzure Resource Manager

CI/CD & DevOps

Azure DevOpsAzure PipelinesGitFlowSonarQube

Observability

Azure MonitorApplication InsightsLog AnalyticsGrafana

Security & Governance

Azure PolicyAzure Key VaultMicrosoft DefenderAzure AD

Data & Analytics

Azure SynapsePower BIAzure Data Factory

Project Phases

1

Discovery & Strategy

6 weeks

Legacy code analysis, domain mapping, modernization roadmap, and business case development

2

Foundation & Governance

8 weeks

Azure landing zone, security policies, CI/CD pipelines, and developer onboarding

3

Core Services Build

10 weeks

Event streaming platform, API gateway, authentication services, and monitoring setup

4

Microservices Migration

20 weeks

Incremental extraction of 12 bounded contexts from monolith to microservices

5

Optimization & Scale

8 weeks

Performance optimization, cost management, and rollout to remaining plants

What We Delivered

  • Microservices platform on AKS with 12 services
  • Real-time production monitoring dashboards
  • Unified API gateway with versioning and documentation
  • Complete CI/CD pipelines with automated testing
  • Event streaming platform processing 10K events/sec
  • Data warehouse with historical analytics
  • Developer documentation and architecture guides
  • Training program for internal development team
"For the first time in our history, we can see production metrics in real-time across all our plants. The modernization not only solved our technical debt but transformed how we make operational decisions."
IT Director — Manufacturing Company

Technologies

AzureAKSEvent HubsCosmos DBAzure SQLBicepAzure DevOps.NET 8Power BI

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