“SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud helped Caleffi face new challenges by offering technological assistance, consultancy services, and operative solutions. This collaboration enabled the Italian headquarters to gain complete control of its Chinese digital property while at the same time giving full management autonomy to the Chinese branch.”

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01

About Caleffi and SparkFabrik


Caleffi Hydronic Solutions is a leader in producing heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and renewable system components for domestic and industrial use and in the supply of avant-garde system solutions. On the other hand, SparkFabrik is an Italian tech company supporting businesses in complex digital transformation processes by designing and building cloud-native applications, cloud systems, and infrastructures through modern DevOps techniques.
02

Challenge


Globally, China is one of the most digitally connected markets today, and the Chinese market offers enormous possibilities for Italian products and services. It also holds a strategic role in the digital field, where new technology, consumer, and business models are surfacing. As Caleffi Hydronic Solutions celebrated 20 years of activity in China in 2019, reaching and guaranteeing a digital experience in China equivalent to the one in any other part of the world in terms of efficiency, safety, contents control, and usability emerged as the new challenge for the company. The company's focus shifted to improve its brand positioning in the Chinese digital market, offering a web UX equal or superior to the local competitors and having an easily updatable platform in Chinese territory.
03

Why Alibaba Cloud


Caleffi collaborated with SparkFabrik to build and manage the Drupal-based multi-country software platform for Caleffi's corporate website. Thanks to SparkFabrik's strong partnership with Alibaba Cloud, it can provide European enterprises the solid continuity needed to succeed in the Chinese market. SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud helped Caleffi face new challenges by offering technological assistance, consultancy services, and operative solutions. This collaboration enabled the Italian headquarters to gain complete control of its Chinese digital property while at the same time giving full management autonomy to the Chinese branch.
04

Architecture


Caleffi leveraged various services and solutions from SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud such as: 1. Consultancy Process, ICP Filing Caleffi needed to complete the ICP Filing and PSB registration procedures to host their applications on servers situated in the Chinese territory. Through the SparkFabrik consultancy services, the ICP Filing procedure – a potentially complicated procedure when not performed by an experienced partner – was efficiently completed in just 20 days. 2. Multi-Cloud Strategy and PaaS SparkFabrik took care of the migration of the application infrastructure of Caleffi Hydronic Solutions on the Cloud, with a development and implementation approach based on the best practices known as The Twelve-Factor App methodology, directed to software development as a service application. The introduction of SparkFabrik Cloud DevOps Platform™ allowed Caleffi to realize a high-availability multi-cloud platform. In addition, SparkFabrik leveraged its LOOKATME Analytics™ performance measuring tool to provide Caleffi with a clear vision of how Caleffi should access its digital properties and engage users in China. With the passage to the multi-cloud strategy and the Chinese request on the new infrastructure, the new performance indicators in Chinese territories showed an improvement of 198%, going from a global performance index of 20 to the present 90.
05

Looking Forward


With years of productive and virtuous collaboration, Caleffi and SparkFabrik embarked together on many projects and challenges. With the focus on expansion and growth in China, Caleffi views partnership with SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud as more strategic and imperative to success in the dynamic Chinese market.