Hermes Germany: Enabling tech-driven deliveries with Google Cloud
About Hermes Germany
With more than 6,000 employees in 60 locations and more than 16,000 ParcelShops, Hermes Germany is one of Europe's leading logistics providers. The Hamburg-based company offers B2C and C2C deliveries with fast shipping times, detailed tracking, and proof of delivery. Hermes' huge network of ParcelShops ensures that the next Hermes drop-off or pick-up spot is always just a short trip away.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usIn six months, Hermes moved key services, including the customer portal MyHermes, to Google Cloud, upping deployment rates by 20%, reducing downtime, and providing a more reliable delivery service.
Google Cloud results
- Enables migration of 100+ business-critical applications in six months, in time for holiday sales with maximum reliability
- Improves the customer experience by drastically reducing downtime and major incidents
- Increases deployment rates by 20%, helping Hermes to deliver new features and experiences faster
- Boosts productivity by strengthening the autonomy of Hermes’ teams with a ‘you build it, you run it’ approach
- Accelerates sustainability goals by tracking CO2 emission values automatically with BigQuery
99.8% of Christmas promises fulfilled after migration
Retailers have come a long way when it comes to delivering items with speed and precision, and the rapid progress has driven customer expectations to new heights. Hermes Germany is here to meet them.
Based in Hamburg, Hermes Germany is one of Europe's leading logistics providers, offering simple and affordable ways of sending parcels around the world. With more than 16,000 ParcelShops across Germany, Hermes is always just a short trip away, whether in big cities or out in the countryside.
Delivering new solutions with Google Cloud
But proximity alone isn't enough: Hermes needs to deliver a stand-out customer experience from dispatch to arrival, and every step in between. Ensuring fast, reliable, and trackable deliveries requires a scalable technology foundation. That's why Hermes moved its IT operations into the cloud. The company quickly outgrew its initial private cloud solution, however. Besides a lack of scalability and slow provisioning, frequent downtimes were the biggest drawback, prompting the Hermes team to seek out alternatives. So Hermes chose Google Cloud as its strategic cloud provider.
"When there's downtime, customers can't commission new shipments or track their deliveries for hours," says Armin Schwanke, Project Manager at Hermes Germany. "Sometimes, this might result into couriers not being able to deliver parcels, which causes painful backlogs. With frequent downtimes and other issues, our previous provider was too restricting for Hermes' ambitions. That's why we decided to migrate our services to Google Cloud."
Following the shift to container-based microservices, the managed Kubernetes capabilities of Google Cloud were a great fit for Hermes. But upon discovering the line-up of serverless technologies, the Hermes team decided to go a step further. "We wanted to hand over even more of the infrastructure-related responsibilities, to be able to focus fully on what's most important to us: delivering new solutions to our customers and colleagues," says Stephan Stapel, Head of Development at Hermes Germany. "That's why the serverless solutions from Google Cloud were especially appealing."
Fulfilling close to 100% of Christmas promises with stable IT
Everyone wants a smooth cloud migration, but a seamless change is especially important in the logistics world. With a never-ending stream of deliveries, every disruption can throw a wrench into the whole operation. And, when Hermes began the migration to Google Cloud in May 2021, there wasn't much room for delays or troubleshooting before the most important time of the year: Christmas.
By moving one microservice at a time, the migration process only took about six months without any serious incidents. "We managed to move to Google Cloud without any major downtimes or disruption for our customers," says Bert Woschkeit, Chief Information Officer of Hermes Germany. "We finished in time for Christmas, and our new Google Cloud solutions proved resilient and stable throughout the holiday period. We managed to fulfil 99.8% of our Christmas promises, delivering parcels on or before December 24."
"We managed to move to Google Cloud without any major downtimes or disruption for our customers. We finished in time for Christmas, and our new Google Cloud solutions proved resilient and stable throughout the holiday period. We managed to fulfil 99.8% of our Christmas promises, delivering parcels on or before December 24."
—Bert Woschkeit, CIO, Hermes GermanyFewer downtimes, more time for new features
Since the move to Google Cloud, Hermes has greatly reduced downtimes and other infrastructure issues, which held the company back in the past. "With our former cloud provider, we had around two major incidents per month," says Schwanke. "This made our services less reliable from a customer perspective and required a lot of time and attention for us. The Google Cloud infrastructure is so much more stable – since our move, we've only had a single major incident, which was quickly resolved. We can use the time gained on more value-adding tasks, such as improving our services and developing new features."
One of Hermes' newest features is a carbon accounting feature, which helps the business meet its sustainability goals. "We are using Big Data technologies, such as BigQuery, to automatically calculate our CO2 emission values", says Nancy Kiesel, Platform Owner Cloud at Hermes Germany. "It's the first feature we've released directly on Google Cloud, and it connects to many of our other applications, old and new."
"We are using Big Data technologies, such as BigQuery, to automatically calculate our CO2 emission values. It's the first feature we've released directly on Google Cloud, and it connects to many of our other applications, old and new."
—Nancy Kiesel, Platform Owner Cloud, Hermes GermanyLeveraging serverless technologies for operational benefits
Besides BigQuery, Hermes uses a variety of Google Cloud solutions to keep its services going, with a special focus on serverless technologies around Cloud Run. The MyHermes website, for example, which customers use to easily send and track deliveries or find ParcelShops, consists of more than 30 microservices each running as a Cloud Run instance. Other services, such as Hermes' larger and more complex logistical solutions, run on Google Kubernetes Engine for the time being. Long-term, however, the Hermes team wants to go all-in on serverless solutions, and is excited to see them evolve.
"We’ve noticed that Google Cloud quickly refines and enhances its own solutions," says Kiesel. "For example, while Cloud Run was initially too volatile for certain applications with ongoing background processes, Google Cloud soon fixed the issue with the always-on CPU allocation feature. That's another reason we're so confident in the serverless approach."
Another crucial Google Cloud solution is the messaging service Pub/Sub, which enables Hermes' many applications to communicate with one another. "Along its journey, a single delivery generates a huge amount of events, which leads to millions of messages sent between our applications each day," explains Stapel. "That's why it's essential for us to have reliable mechanisms in place to manage asynchronous messages, and Pub/Sub enables just that."
Enhancing productivity by delivering independence
By automating manual tasks that used to slow down deployment and distract from more value-generating work, the Hermes team has increased its productivity. "We've certainly become more dynamic, and we're better able to deliver continuously thanks to Google Cloud," says Stapel. "As a result, we have increased our deployment rates by at least 20%."
Another factor that enhanced productivity at Hermes is greater autonomy. Instead of running everything on a shared cluster, Hermes' new IT architecture on Google Cloud allows for more independence, enabling teams to look after their own environments and scaling it automatically. This 'you build it, you run it' philosophy is a hit with developers, says Kiesel: "In the past, we always had to painstakingly coordinate when to work on our shared cluster. Today, our teams can work much more independently with a more flexible infrastructure, which is less work for us and a lot of fun for them. It has led to better performance in the teams and increased satisfaction among our developers."
Meanwhile, Hermes' entire IT organization gained independence from the company's old data center in Hamburg. This was a massive and long-awaited paradigm shift for the company, which used to route all of its traffic through Hamburg, even after its initial move to the cloud. Now, local teams can access Google Cloud directly without the Hamburg-detour, further bolstering their independence and strengthening Hermes' resilience.
Shaping the future of delivery, one parcel at a time
Now that the migration is complete and the Google Cloud stack has proven reliable even during the busy holiday season, the Hermes team can finally take a breather and scope out new ways to innovate with Google Cloud. Automation will be key to reducing costs and further empowering Hermes's people, and Google Cloud solutions will help to make Hermes even more responsive to changing customer preferences.
"Customers are demanding more flexibility," says Stapel. "To keep up with their expectations, we'll need to offer even more dynamic deliveries in the future. Google Cloud provides the technology we need to make that happen, and our strategic partnership constantly pushes us to innovate. We're excited to unveil our new features soon."
"Customers are demanding more flexibility. To keep up with their expectations, we'll need to offer even more dynamic deliveries in the future. Google Cloud provides the technology we need to make that happen, and our strategic partnership constantly pushes us to innovate. We're excited to unveil our new features soon."
—Stephan Stapel, Head of Development, Hermes GermanyTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Hermes Germany
With more than 6,000 employees in 60 locations and more than 16,000 ParcelShops, Hermes Germany is one of Europe's leading logistics providers. The Hamburg-based company offers B2C and C2C deliveries with fast shipping times, detailed tracking, and proof of delivery. Hermes' huge network of ParcelShops ensures that the next Hermes drop-off or pick-up spot is always just a short trip away.