Features

Hosting

Kubernetes & Google Cloud Platform

Alokai uses a scalable and automated Kubernetes solution to provide the best, Google-originated orchestration tool globally. By teaming this powerful tool with the Google Cloud Platform, Alokai ensures that large-scale eCommerce runs as fast as possible.

Google Cloud Platform provides the tools and resources to optimize performance, giving customers a smooth and enjoyable buying experience. With Alokai, businesses can be sure that their customers are getting the best performance possible with the help of Google's industry-leading technology.

Production-ready setup

To reduce the time required to go live with an eCommerce solution, we deliver the entire cloud infrastructure ready for implementation. Our cloud product allows customers to clone our repository and customize it to their needs.

This can help you reduce your time-to-market and create a more cost-effective and reliable way to build applications. by taking advantage of the existing architecture, code, and functionality already provided in the repository.

You can quickly customize the repository content to create an application that meets their exact requirements and can be deployed in a fraction of the time it would take to build it from scratch.

Scalability

Using cloud-native infrastructure handles traffic peaks dynamically by automatically adding or removing resources. Horizontal pod autoscaling is based on resource utilization, for example CPU and RAM. The cluster autoscaler continuously analyzes resource usage and automatically adjusts CPU and memory requests. This approach makes merchants sure their stores will handle massive traffic.

Automatic backups

Alokai backup strategy is a comprehensive plan for protecting data stored in the cloud against accidental or malicious data loss. This strategy includes regular backups of all components to ensure a version of the data is available for recovery in the event of a disaster.

The backup strategy starts with a regular schedule for backups of the entire system - including all applications, services, and data. In addition, the backup strategy also includes provisions for manual backups, which can be taken at any time. This allows for quick recovery of specific components without a complete system recovery.

Multi regions

Choosing regions close to users can lower latency with multi-region deployment models provided by Google Cloud Platform. With this feature, you can serve users content faster from areas closer to them, and - as we all know - conversions are based on performance. This approach optimizes availability, performance, and resource efficiency.

Currently, Alokai does not allow switching regions and also does not provide a possibility to manage a route balancing between regions.

Each region is a separate data center that is consisted of the physical servers (nodes) and the entire infrastructure. Nodes in the different regions are not connected to each other, which means that when one physically understandable region fails, the second is able to work without issues.

High availability

Alokai Cloud Architecture is designed for maximum uptime and reliability. It leverages a multi-zone architecture to ensure a consistent level of uptime.

We use a combination of load balancing, auto-scaling, and fail-over mechanisms to ensure the system is resilient to any potential outages. This ensures that your Alokai application remains available to your customers no matter what.

CDN

With the global scale and reach, we deliver web and static content fast, reliably, and effectively. Alokai Javascript and CSS assets are cached by Google Cloud CDN's global infrastructure with over 100 locations.

CDN caching rules are optimized for Alokai application workloads and can be fine-grained by using the application’s Cache-Control headers. The above features are implemented to improve the store performance.

Security

Alokai is committed to providing cloud services that are aligned with industry standards and best practices. Our cloud services are developed with the latest security protocols and automated processes to ensure a secure and reliable environment for our customers.

In addition, we are constantly updating our cloud services to ensure that we provide the highest quality and performance.

Data protection

Our product ensures that all sensitive data, including passwords, are securely stored in fully encrypted banks. Access to these banks is minimal to ensure the utmost security of our customers' data. The Access policy ensures that only authorized personnel are granted access to sensitive information, keeping it safe from potential security threats.

Furthermore, our encryption technology provides an extra layer of protection, allowing us to guarantee the confidentiality of our customers' data.

SSL

As the SSL protocol became the market standard through the years, Alokai Cloud offers two approaches going along with it. The customer has the possibility to use the default SSL certificate we provide (by design) or can provide us with his custom one, which will be implemented into his environment afterward. Currently, the second method is a manual action on the Alokai side.

DDoS Protection and WAF

Alokai provides customers with a powerful DDoS protection that ensures their online store is secure and protected from malicious attacks. Our web application firewall is designed to detect and prevent malicious traffic and attacks, while our DDoS protection offers advanced protection from the largest and most sophisticated DDoS attacks.

Our advanced security solutions assure customers that their website is protected from potential threats. We also provide regular updates and upgrades to ensure our customers are always protected from the latest threats.

GDPR

Google Cloud Platform provides complete coverage of GDPR requirements, ensuring that customer data is kept safe and secure. This integration allows for data to be stored securely and compliant, which is essential in today’s world of data privacy.

With Google Cloud Platform, Alokai can provide a secure and compliant environment for customers’ data, making it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes.

App extensions

As an extension to the base Alokai application, Alokai Cloud allows customers to develop additional elements, such as separate applications corresponding to the main one, using our flexible API capability. Our API describes what currently can be added, but we are still working on extending its potential.

Monitoring

With a Monitoring solution in place, we proactively detect and resolve issues as quickly as possible. We use extensive internal observability tooling based on GCP standards. As a result, we can identify when a potential danger is coming and give alerts when you should take some action to prevent it. In addition, monitoring data can be provided upon request at any time.

Alerting

To protect your storefront's customer experience, we use full-stack alerting, including Metrics Explorer, Alerting, Uptime Checks, and Logging provided by GCP. These are integrated with external monitoring tools that check the availability and performance metrics (response codes/response times) hosted on Alokai Cloud.

In addition, Alokai Cloud uses GCP tools that report performance metrics and alerts to Alokai in case of incidents or failures.

SLA & Support

The Alokai Cloud team will guarantee 99,9% SLA for the infrastructure. Alokai provides an incident management plan as part of our hosting service SLA. This plan ensures that any incident is quickly identified, resolved, and that any potential risks are mitigated. Our plan provides detailed reporting, escalation, and resolution steps to ensure the highest service availability and performance levels.

Access and error logs

Our product allows developers to publish access and error logs to log aggregator systems easily (e.g., Azure Logs, Grafana, DataDog). Users can quickly identify security or performance problems with access and error logs. Additionally, users can utilize the access and error logs to audit user activity and provide better oversight and control of user actions.

Automatic deployments

Every deployment is being managed via GitHub Actions workflows. We are using a fully automatic deployment flow with the history of changes (git-log) and a simple rollback strategy in case of any failures.

Cloud API

With a public API, Alokai Cloud customers can manage their resources independently. Using our API, developers can add additional components to their base application.

Every new feature we implement has documentation automatically updated, so every functional endpoint and its methods are listed there and ready to be used.

We are still working to extend the API to provide more functionality for developers.

Out of the box API Integrations with third-party services

Flexibility is one of the significant aspects of Alokai architecture’s design. It means that the application’s engine allows it to integrate with the external backends easily without implementing and creating the internal one as a required component.

Thanks to that capability, it saves customer’s time during the development phase. We are still working on extending the list of possible integrations to establish a wider choice.