Dexco + AWS: Delivering applications in a secure and trusted environment

About DEXCO

The digital transformation process is essential for anyone who wants to remain competitive in the market. For more traditional companies, the challenge is even greater, as is the case of Dexco, a Brazilian company in the market for over 70 years, owner of the brands Duratex and Durafloor (Wood division), Deca and Hydra (Deca division) and Portinari, Castelatto e Ceusa (Tiles division), which began its digital transformation process just over two years ago. In the midst of the brand change, which took place last year — until then Duratex — and the new market focus, the company began an unprecedented digital journey, on its way to become more modern and increasingly closer to the consumer.

Challenge

Dexco sought strategic partners, such as ilegra, a global innovation, design and software company that has been working together with the company in the search for new processes, aiming at optimizing software development and operation, with the implementation of new technologies, allowing the company to leverage its strategies and focus exclusively on its core business.

“Every change must start from the inside out. This first step was taken with the repositioning of the brand, from Duratex, to something that encompassed all the areas in which the company operates, as the name Dexco better represents today. At the same time, we noticed that we needed to accelerate our innovation processes and the partnership with the ilegra team has been critical for that,” stated Evandro Gussi Medrado, Specialist Solutions Architect at Dexco.

Why Choose Amazon Web Services?

Allied to the challenge of implementing new processes in the search for optimization of software development and operation, the use of AWS services and resources allows for an ecosystem that is compatible with the company’s needs. The solution used aims to deliver infrastructure services in an easy and practical way, ensuring efficiency and performance with regard to scalability according to demand. The use of managed services, together with good automation practices, enabled a more resilient solution, reducing operational risks such as loss of data and reliability of the system as a whole.

“Our goal was to identify an ecosystem that was compatible with the company’s needs. The technology architecture applied to the environment allows it to deliver infrastructure services in an easy and practical way, ensuring performance efficiency with regard to scalability according to demand,” explains Marcello Perez, Team Leader at ilegra.

Solution

The developed solution is based on essential elements of the AWS infrastructure and platform that confirmed the results obtained. We can highlight the components below:

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): when using the VPC, the aim is to implement a secure environment, with connectivity redundancy and privacy for the Dexco platform. Also, administrative access via site-to-site VPN guarantees maintenance security for applications in case of need.

Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR): ECR adds to the objective of guaranteeing the consolidation, standardization, and centralization of images with security and high availability.

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS): It was used as a solution for orchestrating application containers. Thus, we are able to provide scalable and highly available environments, which use the multi-az concept to mitigate failures. The choice of ECS along with Fargate was important to speed up the deployment of applications to the development teams.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): computing layer to implement the deployment pipeline using solutions such as (Terraform, Jenkins, Ansible, SonarQube, among others).

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS): RDS was used to provide a managed relational database service, with periodic backups generating snapshots in order to be quickly started in a different zone in case of failure.

Application Load Balancer (ALB): Component used to balance the workload for the internal components of the architecture originating from consumers over the internet.

Simple Cloud Storage Service (S3): as a storage solution for static objects generated by applications. The use of S3 has proven to be efficient in terms of maintenance, resiliency and scalability provided by AWS as a service.

AWS CodeBuild: For a solution for compiling and building custom Docker images, CodeBuild shows efficiency in continuous integration by automatically provisioning, which generates reduced waits in queues with multiple builds and continuous scaling.

Amazon CloudWatch: for monitoring computational resources and application services, the service is used to optimize resources relating to data in a unified way to facilitate a global view of the system, mitigating and isolating problems extremely quickly.

Benefits

The deployment of managed AWS solutions coupled with the use of continuous delivery pipelines ensured the development and monitoring of infrastructure with scalable services, in addition to making development teams more independent to build their applications. It also ensured an optimization of costs, since the organization eliminates the need to have IT services related to the management and maintenance of its infrastructure, as well as extinguishes the high investment to acquire and replace our own hardware and warranty services, while having the advantage that the company only pays for the resources used.

The environment also has a high layer of security, ensuring the privacy and resilience of critical information for the company. The implemented solution proved to be an effective alternative, ensuring that applications are executed quickly, safely and with high performance.

The use of this AWS stack also represents Dexco’s concern for environmental sustainability. Eliminating the need for its own servers, the company starts collaborating directly with the goals of The Climate Pledge project, from AWS, which proposes a commitment of net zero impact on carbon emissions by 2040.

According to Medrado, since the beginning of the partnership, in mid-2020, Dexco has identified a 33% reduction in costs with technologies to improve processes, which was also possible because the company started to turn off environments outside of business hours, namely those related to homologation, development etc. “They are turned off for more than 12 hours a day; however, the goal is to turn them off 24 hours a day and only use them when necessary”, said the executive. “These points were essential for the new model that the company was looking for, with scalability, monitoring, security, and cost savings in an agile way. From that point on, a new stage of growth for the company begins, maintaining the quality and excellence of our services,” he added.

“From now on, Dexco and ilegra are taking a new step in their partnership, with the exchange of technological tools, also with an eye on the end consumer, with the development of a B2C platform, which will greatly expand business in the coming years,” concluded Medrado.

About Dexco

We believe that environments exist to be lived. And through our brands – Deca, Portinari, Hydra, Duratex, Castelatto, Ceusa and Durafloor – we offer solutions that combine aesthetics and functionality, promoting comfort and well-being. At Dexco, we believe that we play an important role in society and, since the beginning of our history, environmental, social and governance issues have guided our discussions about the company’s future. We are a Brazilian, private, and publicly traded company, controlled by Itaúsa – Investimentos Itaú S.A. – and by Bloco Seibel. Headquartered in São Paulo, we have 22 strategically located manufacturing and forestry units (States of Minas Gerais, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, Sergipe, and São Paulo), in addition to three panel factories in Colombia – Dexco Colombia. We also lead LD Celulose, through a joint venture with the Lenzing Group, and Caetex, a joint venture created for the planting of eucalyptus forests in Alagoas. Our shares are listed on the Novo Mercado (the highest standard of Corporate Governance) and on the 2019/2020 version of the B3 – ISE stock exchange.

About ilegra

ilegra is a global design, innovation, and software company. With a 20-year history, the company seeks to bring agility to digital strategies, helping companies to face the reality of an ever-evolving market. With strategic partnerships with Google, AWS, GitHub, Hashicorp and Inbenta, the company has market leading clients in its portfolio that have innovation in their DNA, such as DEXCO, Whirlpool, FCA, Bradesco, Cielo, Cresol, Orizon, Sompo Seguros , Nidec Global Appliance, AGCO, SBT and Thomson Reuters.