Manufacturing — B2B commerce

Deployment Architecture for a Global Textile Manufacturer's B2B Platform

Solution and deployment architecture for a global textile manufacturer's B2B commerce platform: the physical topology, the centralised-versus-decentralised infrastructure decision, non-functional requirements, and the landscape recommendation that sized it.

Client
Global home-textiles manufacturer
Role
Enterprise architect — solution and infrastructure deployment architecture
Period
2016-07 – 2017-05

The challenge

A global manufacturer moving into B2B commerce needed more than a logical design: it needed a physical deployment architecture it could buy hardware against, run in more than one data centre, and hold to a service level. The platform had to front both customer and business users, integrate with core ERP and marketing systems, and carry search — while the organisation was still deciding whether to centralise infrastructure or distribute it by region.

Approach

  • Produced a physical deployment architecture — named tiers, node counts and protocols — rather than a conceptual diagram.
  • Modelled centralised and decentralised infrastructure as explicit alternatives, each costed and assessed against the same requirements.
  • Separated frontend, backend and backoffice tiers with active/passive pairing so maintenance would not mean downtime.
  • Wrote non-functional requirements down as a reviewable artefact, so they became testable commitments.
  • Produced a landscape recommendation covering the commerce and marketing footprint together.

Innovation

  • Treated the infrastructure decision as an architecture deliverable in its own right — most commerce designs stop at the logical view and leave the expensive question open.
  • Made non-functional requirements a signed artefact rather than an assumption, which is what let them be tested later.

Outcome

  • Deployment architecture delivered and used as the basis for infrastructure procurement.
  • Centralised-versus-decentralised decision resolved with a documented rationale.
  • Non-functional requirements agreed and recorded ahead of build.
  • Landscape recommendation delivered across commerce and marketing.

Recommendations

  • Take the logical design through to a physical one. A conceptual architecture cannot be procured, staffed or tested against.
  • Answer the centralised-versus-decentralised question early and in writing. It is the decision with the longest shadow over cost and failover.
  • Write the NFRs down before build. Unwritten non-functionals are discovered during performance testing, which is the most expensive place to find them.
  • Design active/passive pairs into the tiering, or accept that routine maintenance will mean downtime.

Architecture

Deployment architecture: reverse proxy tier, application cluster with active and passive storefront and backoffice nodes, database cluster, SOLR cluster, Data Hub, ERP and marketing systems
The physical deployment view: SSL offloading and reverse proxy in front, an application cluster pairing active and passive storefront and backoffice nodes, a two-node database cluster, a SOLR master-slave cluster, and integration through Data Hub to the ERP and marketing estate.
Infrastructure deployment topology diagram
Infrastructure deployment topology from the same architecture set.

Technology

  • SAP Commerce (hybris)
  • Apache SOLR
  • SAP Data Hub
  • SAP ECC / HANA
  • SAP Marketing
  • Reverse proxy / load balancing

Want the working artefacts?

The account above is the whole story. If you want the material behind it — data models and partitioning, sizing inputs, load-test design, the decision frameworks as something you can actually apply — we will send the appendix for Deployment Architecture for a Global Textile Manufacturer's B2B Platform to a work address. Client identities stay masked either way.

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