Innovation Platform
Our client is a global enterprise innovator focused on streamlining ideation, validation, and solution delivery across distributed teams. Having this mission at hand, they partnered with Four Ages. This cooperation aimed to build a product that could structure dispersed innovation efforts and accelerate the journey from concept to market-ready solutions.
Client location
USA
Industry
Innovation Management
Duration
4 years
Team
20-50 people during various project phases
Challenge
Throughout the project, Four Ages focused on overcoming critical challenges related to performance, scalability, and DevOps automation.
The collaboration followed a staff augmentation model, with the project manager and detailed technical documentation provided by the client. The team from Four Ages was responsible for execution and quality delivery.
Throughout the engagement, we had to tackle several key technical and operational challenges:
The existing setup struggled with high-volume user data. It also wasn’t scalable enough to handle growing demand across global teams.
Manual deployment processes led to inefficiencies, delays, and a higher risk of human error.
A requirement for dynamic, responsive, and accessible UI workflows that support localization.
The need to architect a scalable multi-tenant backend with fine-grained access control.
Integration with Azure services and compliance with strict security practices.
Enabling continuous delivery pipelines to support fast iteration cycles.
Solution
To address the challenges, we built a solution relying on the best practices in cloud infrastructure, DevOps automation, and scalable architecture.
Backend Development
We chose .NET Core to build a robust, flexible backend, paired with SQL Server as the primary database. The system was designed as a modular service architecture, supporting maintainability and future growth. A scalable multi-tenant structure allowed the platform to handle increasing data volumes and user activity.
We also implemented Redis for caching, improving responsiveness under load. To streamline delivery, we refactored legacy components and automated database migrations. We also used Azure Active Directory to implement fine-grained, role-based access control across all services.
Frontend Development
The responsive and user-friendly frontend was built using Angular and consisted of over 50 screens, including dashboards, ideation workflows, evaluation metrics, and admin panels. We developed complex, dynamic UI workflows that ensured high performance and consistent UI/UX across the platform.
The interface was fully optimized for both desktop and mobile, meeting enterprise-grade requirements for accessibility and localization.
CI/CD and DevOps
We implemented a fully automated CI/CD pipeline using Azure DevOps Server. This pipeline included:
Build automation
Unit and integration testing
Seamless deployment to staging and production.
Regarding quality assurance, we incorporated SonarQube for static code analysis. This tool allowed us to conduct early diagnostics of any potential issues. We also leveraged Nexus Repository for managing and storing package artifacts, while Azure CLI and ARM templates were used to provision infrastructure, ensuring consistent and repeatable deployments.
Cloud Infrastructure
The platform was deployed on Microsoft Azure, integrating a range of cloud services. We leveraged the following Azure services:
Azure App Services for scalable application hosting
Azure Blob Storage for unstructured data storage
Azure SQL Database for relational data management
Azure Key Vault for secure, centralized secrets management
Azure Service Bus for scalable message queuing and inter-service communication.
Additionally, we put a strong priority on security. For its purposes, we enforced HTTPS and TLS encryption across all endpoints to protect data in transit. Plus, we implemented SQL Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to guard data at rest.
Impact
The solution delivered by Four Ages brought significant improvements, allowing our client to:
Enhance performance by leveraging Azure-based infrastructure
Achieve faster development cycles with automated CI/CD pipelines
Improve code quality through consistent testing and code analysis integrated into the CI/CD process
Reduce deployment risks by using infrastructure-as-code
Refine the user experience by optimizing the backend and designing an intuitive frontend
Responsibilities
Backend development
Frontend development
DevOps
QA & Testing
Security & Compliance
Technologies
Author:
Maria Roy
