Samudera Shipping Line Ltd: Driving resilient business continuity in the cloud
About Samudera Shipping Line Ltd
Samudera Shipping Line Ltd, the shipping arm of Samudera Indonesia Tbk, operates primarily in the container shipping and bulk and tanker business segments, specializing in transporting containerized and non-containerized cargo. Its vessels currently ply trade routes connecting various ports in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Far East, and the Middle East. Alongside its shipping operations, the company provides a range of logistics solutions to cater to its customers’ diverse needs, including warehousing, freight forwarding, and cargo handling services, ensuring seamless end-to-end solutions within Asia.
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About PointStar
PointStar is a cloud transformation leader on a mission to transform business organizations across the globe with industry-leading services. Based in Singapore, PointStar is one of the region’s earliest cloud solutions providers, transforming over 3,000 business organizations.
Samudera Shipping Line Ltd launched a best-in-class disaster recovery (DR) site, improving its Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) by half, and reducing costs by 2X with an on-demand, automated DR with Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR solution, significantly improving speed.
Google Cloud results
- Drives workforce efficiencies with an automated DR site without having to increase headcount in the IT operations team while allowing them to focus on applications
- Ability to spin up a virtual environment quickly to recover applications to resume business operations quickly, significantly improving RTO and RPO by 2X as required by business
- Reduction in operating costs by 2X as compared to running an on-premise DR environment with Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR
- Accelerate innovation for the business with a “Lift and Transform” migration of mission critical applications to the cloud
- Improve resiliency in the cloud with the ability to recover from operational failures at any time
- Providing the flexibility to scale up and down on computing resources as per business needs and paying only for what is used
Reduce time-to-recovery for on-prem environment by 50%
As an integrated shipping company, Samudera Shipping Line Ltd (SSL) delivers end-to-end supply chain solutions and a unified business ecosystem. As a large organization with businesses spread across Asia, they need the most reliable, secure and resilient IT infrastructure in ensuring business continuity for its operations.
As a pivot in driving digital transformation for the organization, SSL adopts a state-of-the-art disaster recovery (DR) site in the cloud. In the event of any failure, due to cyber-attacks or physical disasters, operations are resumed in the cloud eliminating data loss or downtime. It opted against hosting a DR site at an on-premise data center, due to the cost and operational challenge of maintaining IT infrastructure used for disaster recovery.
With the help of a trusted Google partner, PointStar, SSL decided to build a DR site with cutting-edge technologies, Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR Service. The goal was to achieve a cost-efficient, seamless, scalable and on-demand automated DR in less than 3 months.
"With shipping operations and logistics coordination required for supply chains, we simply can't afford to experience outages or data loss that would impact our customers," says Mubarak Ali, Head of Infra and Database Administrator, SSL. "Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR give us the resilience in ensuring our business continuity to drive digital transformation."
Mubarak adds that it was critical to have a trusted and collaborative partner to build the DR site to drive continuous improvement. "PointStar is actively engaged with us in the entire end-to-end process" he says. "They're not here to implement and leave. They are here to support us for the entire journey."
"With shipping lines, warehouse operations, and logistics coordination required for supply chains, we simply can't afford to experience outages or data loss that would impact our customers. Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR give us the resilience in ensuring our business continuity to drive digital transformation."
—Mubarak Ali, Head of Infra and Database Administrator, Samudera Shipping Line LtdDriving resilience for shipping and logistics services
SSL operates its entire operations from an on-premise data center based on VMware virtual machines. Google Cloud Backup and DR is used to protect VMware VMs by creating VM snapshots and having them stored on Google Cloud Storage. With incremental forever backup technology and instant data access capabilities, Google Cloud Backup and DR is able to protect critical systems and significantly reduce their RPO and RTO by half while delivering a lower TCO for the organization.
Google Cloud VMware Engine was chosen as the customer adopted a lift and transform migration to Google Cloud eliminating the need to re-architect these legacy applications. This approach is a pivot to driving innovation for the organization while increasing productivity for the IT operations team and improving speed for the core business. With Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR, SSL is able to rapidly create a virtual environment in Google Cloud to recover applications from the backups stored in Cloud Storage and resume business operations quickly.
One advantage is the flexibility of having an on-demand VMware environment eliminating the need to re-architect a mission critical legacy application and maintaining the similar tools and experience used on-premise. With this approach, SSL is able to build a DR in less than 3 months as compared to 6 to 9 months investing in an alternative on-premise data center. Operating cost is significantly reduced by 2X as compared to deploying servers and keeping it on 24/7 at an DR Data Centre. Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR work hand in hand to deliver a complete DR solution.
Google Cloud VMware Engine delivers a faster, more resilient and auto-scalable environment for disaster recovery eliminating any potential downtime. "Downtime can cause huge disruptions to the business, affecting our bottom line. With Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR, we have complete peace of mind," says Mubarak. "By running Google Cloud VMware Engine, it allows us to elastically scale our resources as per business needs, and that adds value for our shipping lines and logistics customers."
"Downtime can cause huge disruptions to the business, affecting our bottom line. With Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Cloud Backup and DR, we have complete peace of mind. By running Google Cloud VMware Engine, it allows us to elastically scale our resources as per business needs, and that adds value for our shipping lines, logistics customers and warehouse operations."
—Mubarak Ali, Head of Infra and Database Administrator, Samudera Shipping Line Ltd
"The sophisticated interplay of Google Cloud Backup and DR service and Google Cloud VMware Engine gives us the computing resilience we need to drive our digital transformation," he adds.
Business continuity has been improved by reducing Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) requirements by half. Productivity has been increased in the IT operations team, allowing them to focus on enhancing core applications. Mubarak says that would have been challenging in an on-premise DR environment that would require manual maintenance and refresh of infrastructure. "To achieve best-in-class DR, we just need to implement the Google Cloud solution, adoption is easy with minimal training from partner, PointStar, and everything takes care of itself," says Mubarak.
Mubarak says that with on-demand computing resources, the company only gets billed for the service in the event of a DR. This has reduced computing and infrastructure costs by 2X as compared to an on-premise DR environment.
"With an on-demand Google Cloud VMware Engine, there are no modifications required on the application, and no billing until it's needed," says Mubarak. "This is the big advantage of a Google Cloud DR site."
"With an on-demand Google Cloud VMware Engine, there are no modifications required on the application, and no billing until it's needed. This is the big advantage of a Google Cloud DR site that we can't expect from an on-premise data center."
—Mubarak Ali, Head of Infra and Database Administrator, Samudera Shipping Line LtdTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Samudera Shipping Line Ltd
Samudera Shipping Line Ltd, the shipping arm of Samudera Indonesia Tbk, operates primarily in the container shipping and bulk and tanker business segments, specializing in transporting containerized and non-containerized cargo. Its vessels currently ply trade routes connecting various ports in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Far East, and the Middle East. Alongside its shipping operations, the company provides a range of logistics solutions to cater to its customers’ diverse needs, including warehousing, freight forwarding, and cargo handling services, ensuring seamless end-to-end solutions within Asia.
About PointStar
PointStar is a cloud transformation leader on a mission to transform business organizations across the globe with industry-leading services. Based in Singapore, PointStar is one of the region’s earliest cloud solutions providers, transforming over 3,000 business organizations.