From Shared Hosting to Cloud Scalability

“I am very satisfied with the speed of implementation – setting up and migrating our system to the Enterprise Cloud. It was clear that the Mainstream team has extensive experience in e-commerce solutions across various industries.”

Goals:

• One of the main goals of the project was to provide Sava Osiguranje clients with a top-notch online experience with 24/7 website availability and optimal performance of the web store at all times, regardless of the number of users visiting the site.

Results:

• By transitioning to Mainstream Enterprise Cloud, Sava Osiguranje ensured consistent operation of its web store throughout the entire season, including periods of increasing demand. 
• With full support from the Mainstream hosting team, the company relieved its internal resources from the need to monitor IT infrastructure performance and security. This allowed them to focus more on core business activities and initiatives to provide additional value to clients. 
• From a development perspective, the transition to the new hosting solution enabled the rapid introduction of new functionalities such as a user database, QR registration and vouchers, API integrations with ERP systems and payment processors, as well as the integration of new services into the web store. 

Website Stability is the No.1 Priority 

Following market trends and the needs of their clients, who increasingly use online services, Sava Osiguranje launched an online store in 2018, followed by the website putno-osiguranje.rs, which has been operational since 2021. Considering the importance of these sites, which represent the pillars of Sava Osiguranje’s digital channels, the company continuously works on their improvements. These activities have yielded results – an increase in visits and sales through the online store, as well as multiple increases in the number of visitors and conversions on the putno-osiguranje.rs site.

However, the rapid growth of web traffic did not come without challenges. The existing shared hosting model, which proved to be a good option when the number of users was significantly smaller, could not keep up with traffic peaks.

“Downtime occurred when the website traffic was highest, during holidays, non-working days, weekends, and before the end of the working day. Support availability was minimal during those times, making it practically impossible to establish cooperation between the multiple teams needed to resolve the issue: our then hosting partner, our IT department, and the vendor.”

The highest traffic on the web store was recorded on the Friday before May 1st when the website experienced downtime. This event, combined with ongoing challenges, prompted Sava Osiguranje to seek a new hosting partner to ensure the stability of critical web services.

“The moment a connection is established between the brand and the user experience is also the moment to consider a more advanced solution than shared hosting.”

Advanced Alternative to Shared Hosting

For the transition to a new, more advanced type of web hosting, Sava Osiguranje needed a partner who, in addition to providing a more advanced technical solution, would also ensure continuous support and preventive maintenance of IT infrastructure. 

Leveraging its rich experience working with clients from the e-commerce industry, Mainstream offered a comprehensive service: hosting on the Enterprise Cloud platform. 

Unlike shared hosting, which does not offer the possibility of dynamically scaling resources according to current needs, resources on Enterprise Cloud can be quickly scaled up and down. This eliminates the risk of the company running out of necessary resources, ensuring stable performance. Additional advantages include services available on cloud hosting such as load balancing, manual and automatic resource scaling, and support from Mainstream experts for their proper utilization.

Scalable Cloud Hosting and Comprehensive Support 

After analyzing technical requirements, Mainstream consultants created the appropriate setup and migrated the system to the Enterprise Cloud. Thanks to a highly available system with an uptime guarantee of 99.99%, consistent and stable operation of Sava Osiguranje’s website and web store was ensured.

To ensure a smooth transition process to the new hosting environment, our team was available to provide preventive support after implementation. 

“Less than a month after going live, we received information that disk usage had exceeded a certain threshold and that Mainstream experts had pre-emptively adjusted the parameters of the virtual machines. This means that the hypercare period phase of the project was respected, and it was then clear to us that we had a partner we could rely on.”

In addition to implementing the hosting solution and hypercare support, Mainstream took over complete performance and security monitoring, further relieving the client’s internal IT resources.