PigeonShip
Industry: Transportation, Logics, Supply Chain
Services Rendered: Solution Architecture, UI/UX Design, API Development, Mobile Development, Web Development, Agile Software Delivery and Management
Time Frame: 12+ months
PigeonShip is a same day and final mile delivery platform operating in the United States and Canada. Their turnkey logistics-as-a-service offering enables customers to cut overhead costs, exceed customer satisfaction, and compete with the final mile experience of online Goliaths such as Amazon. Their integrated software for high-volume 3PL e-commerce delivery disrupts the traditional hub and spoke shipping model and enables companies like London Drugs to delight their customers with same-day or next-day delivery.
Business Needs
Mobile Development: Xamarin to React Native
PigeonShip’s technology architecture included legacy mobile apps built on Xamarin, the .NET mobile language acquired by Microsoft in 2016 and replaced by .NET MAUI in 2022. With Xamarin being discontinued, some third parties included in the PigeonShip architecture became difficult to support while incurring significant licensing fees. PigeonShip needed to get its mobile apps off Xamarin.
Back-end Development: Monolith to Serverless
PigeonShip’s back-end was also a monolithic architecture built on Python and Django and deployed to AWS virtual machines. Scaling became a problem, since PigeonShip needed to add more machines during peak season and then scale back down during the lighter months. PigeonShip ended up paying for server uptime they didn’t need and the costs of keeping those virtual machines on meant increased server costs.
Web Development: PHP / Django to React
The legacy web portal and back-end were also difficult to support. The code was old and the web Django layer made it difficult to tie the web admin pages into new, more modern APIs.
Solution Description
Move from Xamarin, Python, Django monolithic architecture to a React.js, React Native, Node.js microservice architecture on AWS Lambdas. Rearchitecting and rebuilding also opened the door to redesign the products and leverage PigeonShip’s learnings from years of operating in the wild.
“AppCreative is as close as you get to having your own in-house tech team while still outsourcing… For the first time in seven years, I’m confident our Tech Team has aligned themselves with our initiatives, needs, and business projections.”
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