Posts Tagged ‘CloudRepatriation’
[DevoxxFR2013] From Cloud Experimentation to On-Premises Maturity: Strategic Infrastructure Repatriation at Mappy
Lecturer
Cyril Morcrette serves as Technical Director at Mappy, a pioneering French provider of geographic and local commerce services with thirteen million euros in annual revenue and eighty employees. Under his leadership, Mappy has evolved from a traditional route planning service into a comprehensive platform integrating immersive street-level imagery, local business discovery, and personalized recommendations. His infrastructure strategy reflects deep experience with both cloud and on-premises environments, informed by multiple large-scale projects that pushed technological boundaries.
Abstract
Cloud computing excels at enabling rapid prototyping and handling uncertain demand, but its cost structure can become prohibitive as projects mature and usage patterns stabilize. This presentation chronicles Mappy’s journey with immersive geographic visualization — a direct competitor to Google Street View — from initial cloud deployment to eventual repatriation to on-premises infrastructure. Cyril Morcrette examines the economic, operational, and technical factors that drove this decision, providing a framework for evaluating infrastructure choices throughout the application lifecycle. Through detailed cost analysis, performance metrics, and migration case studies, he demonstrates that cloud is an ideal launch platform but often not the optimal long-term home for predictable, high-volume workloads. The session concludes with practical guidance for smooth repatriation and the broader implications for technology strategy in established organizations.
The Immersive Visualization Imperative
Mappy’s strategic pivot toward immersive geographic experiences required capabilities beyond traditional mapping: panoramic street-level imagery, 3D reconstruction, and real-time interaction. The project demanded massive storage (terabytes of high-resolution photos), significant compute for image processing, and low-latency delivery to users.
Initial estimates suggested explosive, unpredictable traffic growth. Marketing teams envisioned viral adoption, while technical teams worried about infrastructure bottlenecks. Procuring sufficient on-premises hardware would require months of lead time and capital approval — unacceptable for a market-moving initiative.
Amazon Web Services offered an immediate solution: spin up instances, store petabytes in S3, process imagery with EC2 spot instances. The cloud’s pay-as-you-go model eliminated upfront investment and provided virtually unlimited capacity.
Cloud-First Development: Speed and Agility
The project launched entirely in AWS. Development teams used EC2 for processing pipelines, S3 for raw and processed imagery, CloudFront for content delivery, and Elastic Load Balancing for web servers. Auto-scaling handled traffic spikes during marketing campaigns.
This environment enabled rapid iteration:
– Photographers uploaded imagery directly to S3 buckets
– Lambda functions triggered processing workflows
– Machine learning models (running on GPU instances) detected business facades and extracted metadata
– Processed panoramas were cached in CloudFront edge locations
Within months, Mappy delivered a functional immersive experience covering major French cities. The cloud’s flexibility absorbed the uncertainty of early adoption while development teams refined algorithms and user interfaces.
The Economics of Maturity
As the product stabilized, usage patterns crystallized. Daily active users grew steadily but predictably. Storage requirements, while large, increased linearly. Processing workloads became batch-oriented rather than real-time.
Cost analysis revealed a stark reality: cloud expenses were dominated by data egress, storage, and compute hours — all now predictable and substantial. Mappy’s existing data center, built for core mapping services, had significant spare capacity with fully amortized hardware.
Cyril presents the tipping point calculation:
– Cloud monthly cost: €45,000 (storage, compute, bandwidth)
– On-premises equivalent: €12,000 (electricity, maintenance, depreciation)
– Break-even: four months
The decision to repatriate was driven by simple arithmetic, but execution required careful planning.
Repatriation Strategy and Execution
The migration followed a phased approach:
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Data Transfer: Used AWS Snowball devices to move petabytes of imagery back to on-premises storage. Parallel uploads leveraged Mappy’s high-bandwidth connectivity.
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Processing Pipeline: Reimplemented image processing workflows on internal GPU clusters. Custom scripts replaced Lambda functions, achieving equivalent throughput at lower cost.
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Web Tier: Deployed Nginx and Varnish caches on existing web servers. CDN integration with Akamai preserved low-latency delivery.
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Monitoring and Automation: Migrated CloudWatch metrics to Prometheus/Grafana. Ansible playbooks replaced CloudFormation templates.
Performance remained comparable: page load times stayed under two seconds, and system availability exceeded 99.95%. The primary difference was cost — reduced by seventy-five percent.
Operational Benefits of On-Premises Control
Beyond economics, repatriation delivered strategic advantages:
– Data Sovereignty: Full control over sensitive geographic imagery
– Performance Predictability: Eliminated cloud provider throttling risks
– Integration Synergies: Shared infrastructure with core mapping services reduced operational complexity
– Skill Leverage: Existing systems administration expertise applied directly
Cyril notes that while cloud elasticity was lost, the workload’s maturity rendered it unnecessary. Capacity planning became straightforward, with hardware refresh cycles aligned to multi-year budgets.
Lessons for Infrastructure Strategy
Mappy’s experience yields a generalizable framework:
1. Use cloud for uncertainty: Prototyping, viral growth potential, or seasonal spikes
2. Monitor cost drivers: Storage, egress, compute hours
3. Model total cost of ownership: Include migration effort and operational overhead
4. Plan repatriation paths: Design applications with infrastructure abstraction
5. Maintain hybrid capability: Keep cloud skills current for future needs
The cloud is not a destination but a tool — powerful for certain phases, less optimal for others.
Conclusion: Right-Sizing Infrastructure for Business Reality
Mappy’s journey from cloud experimentation to on-premises efficiency demonstrates that infrastructure decisions must evolve with product maturity. The cloud enabled rapid innovation and market entry, but long-term economics favored internal hosting for stable, high-volume workloads. Cyril’s analysis provides a blueprint for technology leaders to align infrastructure with business lifecycle stages, avoiding the trap of cloud religion or on-premises dogma. The optimal stack combines both environments strategically, using each where it delivers maximum value.