As a Montreal-based fashion retailer specializing in stylish clothing for women across more than 140 locations expanded its unified commerce strategy with Shopify, one question became critical: was the cloud environment behind it strong enough to keep everything running smoothly?
The core application was hosted in Microsoft Azure. It worked. But it had never been formally assessed for resilience. Disaster recovery planning was incomplete, regional redundancy was limited, and internal IT resources were stretched thin.
Before moving forward with confidence, the retailer needed clarity.
Compugen stepped in as their Technology Ally, delivering a tailored Azure Health and Risk Assessment and designing a high-availability architecture that strengthened the foundation supporting unified commerce.
The retailer was working to better connect in-store and online operations. Shopify played a key role in that effort, supported by a Boomi integration layer hosted in Microsoft Azure.
But as modernization advanced, questions surfaced about what was happening behind the scenes.
The application was deployed in Canada Central without a defined cross-region disaster recovery strategy. Zonal and regional redundancy had not been formally designed. Security, monitoring, and resilience controls had evolved over time without a structured review against Microsoft’s Well-Architected Framework.
At the same time, a single internal IT resource was responsible for managing the environment.
This is a familiar position for many IT leaders. The business moves quickly and infrastructure has to keep up.
The retailer needed to understand its exposure and determine whether its Azure environment could reliably support unified commerce across more than 140 locations.
There was no outage that triggered this work. The decision was proactive.
Through Compugen’s Azure Health and Risk Assessment, potential resilience gaps were identified before they became operational problems. As commerce systems became more interconnected, leadership recognized that infrastructure stability would directly impact both store operations and ecommerce performance.
Rather than wait for disruption, the organization chose to reinforce its foundation.
The engagement needed to be practical and focused. Budget considerations required flexibility, and the work had to align with real implementation plans.
Compugen adjusted the scope accordingly, concentrating on high availability, disaster recovery readiness, and regional redundancy within Microsoft Azure.
Compugen approached the engagement in two phases.
First came a comprehensive Azure Health and Risk Assessment. Azure specialists reviewed identity architecture, network configuration, security posture, monitoring, and overall resilience planning. The review focused on the existing deployment in Canada Central and highlighted the need for a clearly defined regional redundancy strategy.
The conclusion was straightforward: to protect the hosted application from regional failure, cross-region high availability needed to be designed and documented.
In the second phase, Compugen developed a high-availability architecture that mirrored the existing Canada Central landing zone into Canada East. The design included Azure Site Recovery for replication and failover, Application Gateway configuration, FortiGate firewall integration, and a network architecture built to support production-level redundancy across regions.
Canada Central remained the primary region. Canada East became the designated disaster recovery and redundancy region, creating a structured cross-region continuity model.
The retailer chose to carry out the implementation internally after hiring an Azure administrator. Anticipating that, Compugen built advisory support hours into the Statement of Work. This gave the organization access to Azure expertise during implementation, providing guidance when needed while allowing the internal team to maintain control.
It was experience by design; a clear architectural plan paired with practical support.
With a validated high-availability architecture in place, the retailer gained a defined disaster recovery strategy and a structured regional redundancy model within Microsoft Azure.
The cross-region design between Canada Central and Canada East strengthened resilience and reduced exposure to regional disruption.
For a retailer operating across more than 140 locations, that translates into greater confidence that the infrastructure supporting unified commerce is stable, recoverable, and aligned with business continuity needs.
Instead of relying on informal resilience practices, the organization now operates with a documented architecture built to support long-term modernization.
With its Azure foundation reinforced, the retailer is well positioned to continue advancing its unified commerce strategy.
The high-availability design provides a scalable base for future cloud optimization, stronger data integration, and continued modernization.
Compugen remains engaged as a Technology Ally, ready to support further Azure refinement, governance improvements, and resilience planning as business priorities evolve.
This engagement grew from an existing relationship within the Compugen Group of Companies, bringing Microsoft Azure expertise into a trusted retail account.
The partnership worked because it was focused and practical. The retailer received guidance tailored to its operating model and financial realities, along with an architecture designed for real-world implementation.
Compugen strengthened the foundation behind unified commerce, ensuring the retailer’s infrastructure could support its growth with confidence.
If you are modernizing your commerce platform, expanding omnichannel capabilities, or questioning whether your Microsoft Azure environment can withstand regional disruption, now is the time to take a closer look.
Compugen’s Azure specialists help organizations assess cloud readiness, design high-availability architectures, and build resilient foundations aligned with business continuity goals.
Connect with a Compugen expert to evaluate your Azure environment and build a cloud strategy that supports growth without sacrificing stability.