Migros One Seamlessly Scales to Handle 10x Traffic Using AWS

Migros One unites the online channels of Migros, a leading supermarket chain in Türkiye. Encompassing Migros Sanal Market, Migros Hemen, Migros Yemek, Tazedirekt, Macroonline, Migros Ekstra, and Mion, Migros One also uses the integrated power of all the subsidiaries in the Migros business. It delivers groceries and food, organic nutrition, personal care, and technology products to more than 1 million customers each month.

On the journey of growing its business and optimizing operations, Migros One wanted its small engineering team to focus on accelerating innovation and delivering customer value quickly rather than on operations. The company sought to speed up scaling, adopt new technologies, and deploy services to minimize the bureaucratic processes that constrained its on-premises environment. “We wanted to migrate to the cloud, where it’s easier to scale and deploy applications right away,” says Mehmet Başal, head of DevOps at Migros One.

After exploring a range of cloud solutions, Migros One found that AWS had well-integrated, well-documented, and simple-to-implement services. “Onboarding non-DevOps colleagues was also much easier on AWS,” says Nurettin Yilmaz, head of B2B software development at Migros One. In 2018, Migros One carried out its Cloud Transformation Project to migrate from on premises to AWS.

Drawing on its own expertise and AWS documentation, the Migros One team developed the first workable version of its monolithic application on AWS in 3–4 weeks, even though it had no prior AWS experience. Where regulations did not permit data migration to the cloud, Migros One used AWS Direct Connect, which organizations use to create a dedicated network connection to AWS. To meet the challenge of managing varying volumes and different data types in migration, the company used AWS Glue, which lets companies discover, prepare, and integrate all their data at virtually any scale.

Additionally, since 2022, Migros One has used the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (AWS MAP)—a comprehensive and proven cloud migration program—for new workloads.

After the migration, Migros One modernized its architecture by using microservices. Migros One’s microservices architecture is deployed on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), a fully managed Kubernetes service. It uses Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)—fully managed message queuing for microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. For its database, Migros One uses Amazon Relational Database Service (AmazonRDS), which provides easy-to-manage relational databases optimized for total cost of ownership. The company also implemented other AWS services for storage, networking, and application load balancing.

Using AWS, Migros One accelerated innovation and reduced time to market, speeding up deployment because it did not need to worry about servers or operational issues. Migrating to a microservices architecture also helped Migros One develop more services in less time. “We used automated testing and validation to reduce our 2-week deployment cycle for services to minutes,” says Başal. “Migros One now deploys services on demand with virtually no downtime or impact on user experience.” Quick deployment was especially helpful during COVID-19, when the company released several features to prioritize older customers who were more susceptible to the disease.

The company increased operational efficiency through managed services and automation, freeing up 60 percent of its operations team to focus on core business objectives and product development. And for further cost savings, Migros One uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Spot Instances, which run fault-tolerant workloads for up to 90 percent off. These initiatives have helped to reduce costs by 20 percent.

Migros One’s innovative services now include several bots that it built on Amazon Bedrock—a simple way to build and scale generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications with foundation models. Those bots have been used to help deploy applications and assist with incident management. And to develop a question-answering assistant, the engineering team used Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases—which lets organizations deliver more relevant, accurate, and customized responses—incorporating its proprietary documentation into the generative AI application. “Our teams get the opportunity to work on new technologies,” says Başal. “Plus, getting large compute capacity—for example, for machine learning or model training—is quicker on AWS.”

By accelerating innovation, Migros One can now better meet customer needs. The company recently developed a feature called “What should I cook?” using Amazon SageMaker, which lets businesses build, train, and deploy machine learning models. Using the feature, customers can enter the name of a dish or recipe, obtain its ingredients, and add them to their shopping carts.

Migros One will continue to grow on AWS, using its standardized architecture to develop services and enter new segments. For instance, since July 2024, it has used AWS Enterprise Support, which provides a comprehensive suite of resources. “The comprehensive support we receive from the AWS account team has fostered a true collaboration,” says Başal. “In addition, since adopting AWS Enterprise Support, the expert guidance, best practices, and operational support from the extensively trained engineering team have been game changers. Our dedicated AWS cloud operations architect makes sure we maximize our cloud journey with tailored engagements.”

Migros One’s growth radar in 2025 includes M1 Grocery Solutions, a software-as-a-service solution it is developing on AWS for retailers who want to start their own online channels. As part of the solution, Migros One will provide the entire gamut of services, including a website, a mobile app, and logistics to pick and deliver products to end customers. M1 Grocery Solutions marks Migros One’s foray into the B2B segment, and the company hopes to grow and collaborate with retailers across Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa with this solution.