Gem Diamonds is an international mining company active in the diamond sector. Gem Diamonds' headquarters is located in London and owns various mines in Botswana and Lesotho. In addition, the company also has departments in Johannesburg and Antwerp. Gem Diamonds is a major player in the diamond industry. In 2018, the company sold the Lesotho Legend, a 910-carat rough diamond, for a staggering 32 million dollars. That is the fifth largest rough diamond in the world. Needless to say, Gem Diamonds highly values safety and reliability.

The sale of the Lesotho Legend occurred around the time that Gem Diamonds came into contact with Realdolmen. The existing tender application no longer met the high requirements in terms of speed and responsiveness, especially during peak times. In addition, there was a need for extra functionalities, which required an application modernization.

Diamant Auction 2.0

The sale of the Lesotho Legend occurred around the time that Gem Diamonds came into contact with Realdolmen. The existing tender application no longer met the high requirements in terms of speed and responsiveness, especially during peak times. In addition, there was a need for extra functionalities, which required an application modernization.

A team from the DevOps Factory of Realdolmen started immediately and designed a new dynamic e-tender platform. This application allows Gem Diamonds to set up online tenders. After an extensive registration process and an invitation to take part in a specific auction, customers can bid on precious stones. Gem Diamonds staff members can now follow the auctions' progress live.

As many customers wish to inspect the stones with their own eyes before placing bids in the tens of thousands, or even more, they can come over to Antwerp to see their potential acquisition in person. Appointments for these viewings are booked using the application's calendar module. The invoicing after the purchase is handled through the e-tender platform as well.

Security First

As a typical auction consists of fifty to eighty lots, with each lot containing one or more rough stones. This implies that every auction generates bids and invoices adding up to tens of millions of euros. Security was therefore a major factor to consider while developing the platform. Realdolmen ethical hackers were called in to investigate the platform thoroughly and to detect possible leaks or loopholes. Aside from a number of recommendations, which were implemented by the DevOps team, the hacking stand the test with flying colors.

Up a Gear with Microsoft Azure

The fact that the new tender platform scores well in terms of security and data privacy partly comes from the fact it can also count on the strict cloud security of Microsoft Azure on which the new environment is built. But Azure also appears to offer an excellent answer to the other requirements that Gem Diamonds set for the new application:

• Flexibility: the application must be able to deal with the high load at peak times during the tender process, and therefore remain equally efficient under stress.
   
• High stability: due to continuous availability of the platform.
   
• Unburdening infrastructure management: Gem Diamonds does not have an IT service department that can manage the servers and does not really want to be involved in that part.
   
• Scalability and cost-efficiency: without Cloud, the underlying infrastructure must be dimensioned at peak times. This implies there is often an overcapacity and the heavy investment came actually to nothing. Cloud makes it possible to have the right capacity for that moment at any time. The pay-per-use model also ensures that payment is only made for the capacity that is actually needed. This allows investments to be shifted to domains other than infrastructure, such as new functionality to make the company digitally "future-proof".