01
The challenge
The platform combined a customer-facing Next.js experience with Laravel/PHP backend services and serverless workloads on Azure. The infrastructure had to support customer onboarding, meal-plan selection, subscriptions and continuous application change while keeping production secure and reliable. As the platform evolved, the focus was on removing manual infrastructure and deployment work, improving security at the edge, and establishing a predictable delivery process across development, staging and production.
02
Solution architecture
Request path in teal; dashed lines are private connectivity, deployment and telemetry. Scroll sideways on small screens.
Layers top to bottom. Controls apply at every layer.
03
Approach
- 01Azure cloud architecture: designed and managed the infrastructure for the web application, backend services and serverless workloads.
- 02Application platform: owned the hosting and deployment requirements for the Laravel/PHP services and the Next.js front end.
- 03Serverless: moved event-driven and supporting workloads onto Azure Functions, so there was no dedicated infrastructure to operate for them.
- 04CI/CD: built and maintained Azure DevOps pipelines for automated builds and deployments across environments.
- 05Infrastructure as code: provisioned and managed the platform with Terraform, removing manual configuration.
- 06Edge security: managed Cloudflare DNS, TLS and WAF controls for every public endpoint.
- 07Production operations: deployments, infrastructure changes, monitoring, troubleshooting and incidents, end to end.
04
How the delivery ran
- Baseline first: the existing Azure estate mapped, then brought under Terraform environment by environment.
- Pipelines per application in Azure DevOps, with staging as the gate before production.
- Event-driven jobs such as order processing, notifications and scheduled tasks moved from always-on servers to Azure Functions behind queues.
- Cloudflare put in front of every public hostname, with WAF rules tuned against real traffic and TLS handled at the edge.
- Monitoring and alerting wired to the same dashboards used for releases, so every deployment could be verified the same way.
05
What was delivered
- Azure cloud infrastructure as Terraform
- Laravel/PHP application infrastructure
- Next.js application deployment
- Azure Functions workloads behind queues
- Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines
- Development, staging and production environments
- Cloudflare DNS and edge configuration
- WAF, TLS and secure application ingress
- Application and infrastructure monitoring
- Production deployment, troubleshooting and optimisation
06
Results
| Dimension | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Cloud platform | Standardised Azure infrastructure supporting the whole application ecosystem |
| Application delivery | Repeatable CI/CD for the Laravel and Next.js applications |
| Serverless | Event-driven workloads moved onto managed Azure services where appropriate |
| Security | Stronger edge protection through Cloudflare and WAF, with controlled access |
| Infrastructure | Manual configuration replaced by Terraform |
| Operations | Better visibility and more predictable production support |
| Delivery | Faster and more controlled application releases |
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