Oracle Cloud Case — Guangzhou Hongshi Electronic Technology Co. Ltd.
Project Background
As the business keeps expanding, the company's supply chain RPA business needs to migrate to the cloud. This RPA system is used for unified supply management and connects with component suppliers, enabling process-based order demand handling and supporting internal supply chain product ordering, thereby improving internal staff efficiency and helping business growth.
The whole RPA application contains three core components:
- RPA Commander — schedules worker robots to process orders
- RPA Creator — orchestrates and generates automated order flows
- RPA Worker — continuously executes order processing tasks in real time
The customer plans to deploy the whole RPA resource set in the Singapore region, hoping to leverage cloud platform capabilities to meet needs for high bandwidth and elastic host scaling and convenient storage and to build an RPA process platform that unifies resource management and simplifies the supply chain order process.
Challenges
It is not only about solving the RPA cloud resource deployment problem but also about how to unify management and efficiently optimize the supply chain order process
Supply chain order traffic has peak and off-peak differences. Fixed server resources are underpowered at order peaks and idle at off-peak times — requiring elastic scaling capability.
The RPA Commander needs to schedule a large number of Worker robots to process orders. It needs a reliable traffic distribution mechanism to uniformly schedule the temporarily scaled working nodes.
The business is deployed in the overseas Singapore region and the RPA carries core business data such as supply chain orders and supply sources. It needs network isolation and access protection to ensure business and data security.
The existing RPA business lacks a cloud-native foundation and is hard to manage resources uniformly. The order process is cumbersome with much manual operation and the internal supply chain order handling efficiency is limited.
Solutions
Deploy the whole supply chain RPA cloud solution in the Singapore region based on Oracle Cloud
Use Oracle cloud hosts to carry business traffic together with the AutoScaling automatic elastic scaling service. New hosts are added automatically at business peaks and instances are released automatically at off-peak times — allocating compute on demand.
Deploy an Oracle managed load balancer to distribute traffic uniformly so that the RPA Commander can uniformly schedule the temporarily scaled Worker robots.
Rely on the high bandwidth capability of Oracle cloud hosts to meet the business high bandwidth needs and use Oracle object storage as shared storage for all business nodes to access.
The RPA platform lets internal staff uniformly manage supply sources and query and order component products. The Creator orchestrates automated order flows and submits them to the Commander. The Commander schedules Worker robots to continuously process orders and returns results to the Commander — realizing an end-to-end automated order flow.
Project Architecture
For the customer's current cloud migration needs Oracle cloud hosts were chosen to carry business traffic. For elastic scaling and load balancing the cloud AutoScaling and a managed load balancer were chosen so that the business can elastically scale machines for peak traffic. For cloud security the cloud security groups and security firewall protection services were used and all business machines are deployed in the Oracle private network — greatly improving cloud resource security.
Customer Outcomes
Unified management and order process automation and elastic compute and sufficient bandwidth and convenient storage ensure business security and improve order handling efficiency
Build a supply chain RPA automation platform to unify supply source management and simplify the whole component order query and ordering process — reducing manual operations and improving internal staff efficiency.
Adopt a combination of fixed Worker plus AutoScaling temporary elastic Worker. Scale up at peaks to ensure order processing capacity and release machines automatically at off-peak times to save IT costs.
Rely on the high bandwidth of Oracle Cloud to meet the RPA business high bandwidth needs. Load balancing distributes traffic and ensures stable scheduling of multiple RPA robots.
Object storage serves as a shared storage resource that all RPA working nodes can access conveniently — fitting the data read and write needs of order processing.
Core businesses are deployed in an isolated private subnet together with firewall and security list protection to ensure the security of core business data such as supply chain orders and supply sources.
Resources are deployed in the Singapore region to conveniently connect with many component suppliers worldwide and fit Hongshi Electronic's global security camera supply chain business.