Case Study:
Berjaya Starbucks Coffee
Berjaya Starbucks Coffee Company Sdn Bhd operates the Starbucks brand in Malaysia under a licensing agreement with Starbucks Coffee International. As a leading player in the food and beverage retail industry, the company manages over 300 stores nationwide, offering high-quality handcrafted beverages, premium coffee beans, and a wide selection of food products. Starbucks Malaysia’s target market includes urban professionals, students, and coffee enthusiasts seeking premium café experiences and personalized customer engagement.
The Challenge
Starbucks faced increasing concerns about whether its existing on-premises infrastructure could keep up with growing business and compliance needs. Limited security controls and manual audit processes made it difficult to meet evolving internal and regulatory requirements. At the same time, the team was challenged with scalability and reliability constraints, as the on-prem environment could not deliver the desired uptime or performance. Furthermore, the lack of a clear cloud strategy hindered future growth and modernization. Adopting AWS was seen as the solution to strengthen security, ensure compliance, and enable scalable, reliable operations for long-term expansion.
Why Choose Amazon Web Services?
AWS was chosen for its ability to deliver secure, scalable, and high-performing infrastructure while reducing operational complexity. Its multi-layer security with IAM and encryption safeguards data, while extensive compliance certifications (ISO, SOC, PCI) support governance requirements. Through auto-scaling on AWS Fargate and Multi-AZ RDS, the system achieves high availability and resilience. Combined with CloudFront and Application Load Balancer, performance and user experience are significantly enhanced. Meanwhile, AWS’s fully managed services minimize maintenance overhead, allowing the team to focus on innovation and business growth.
Why G-AsiaPacific?
Starbucks Malaysia views AWS as a long-term strategic partner in its digital journey, supporting sustainability goals, operational agility, and continuous innovation to meet evolving customer expectations. G-AsiaPacific (GAP), as an AWS Premier Partner, provided professional services to plan and execute the migration of Starbucks Malaysia’s mobile application to AWS. GAP handled architecture design, migration, and performance tuning to ensure a seamless transition with zero downtime. Their support improved application scalability, security, and responsiveness, delivering a faster and more reliable customer experience.
The Services Provided
The new mobile application is seamlessly integrated into our AWS architecture to ensure scalability, security, and performance.
Key AWS services supporting our operations include:
Amazon CloudFront
Enhances security and accelerates global content delivery through a fast, reliable CDN.
Amazon S3
Provides highly scalable and durable storage for application content and assets.
Application Load Balancer (ALB)
Efficiently distributes incoming traffic across backend containers to maintain availability and performance.
AWS Fargate
Enables the deployment and management of containerized workloads without the need to manage servers.
Amazon RDS (MariaDB)
Offers a reliable, managed relational database service that ensures data consistency and automated backups.
Internet Gateway
Provides secure and controlled internet connectivity for public-facing components of the application.
Quantifiable Improvements
After migrating to AWS, the system achieved a substantial boost in performance and reliability. Uptime increased from approximately 95% to 99.9%, delivering an additional 4.9% in availability. Response times improved significantly as well, dropping from around 1.8 seconds to 1.1 seconds—about 40% faster. Security posture also strengthened, moving from partial manual controls to fully automated, policy-based compliance. Additionally, operational overhead was reduced by 30% thanks to the shift from high manual maintenance to managed services such as AWS Fargate and RDS.
- Uptime improved from approximately 95% to 99.9%, representing a 4.9% increase in availability and more reliable service delivery.
- Response time decreased from 1.8 seconds to 1.1 seconds, making the application about 40% faster for end users.
- Security compliance was strengthened by replacing manual controls with automated, policy-based governance, ensuring 100% alignment with regulatory and internal standards.
- By adopting managed services such as AWS Fargate and Amazon RDS, operational overhead was reduced by 30%, significantly lowering manual maintenance efforts and improving overall productivity.
The Outcome
Agility & Performance
Improved app responsiveness and reduced downtime during high-traffic campaigns.
Cost Optimization
Transitioned to a pay-as-you-go model, reducing infrastructure overhead.
Scalability
Seamlessly handled spikes in mobile app traffic during festive seasons and marketing pushes.
Innovation
Enabled faster deployment of new features such as in-app ordering and reward tracking.
Security & Compliance
Strengthened data protection and compliance through AWS-native encryption and monitoring tools.
How did AWS Enhance your business?
AWS strengthens Starbucks’ operational framework by improving security, compliance, visibility, and resilience, while laying a strong foundation for long-term digital transformation and enterprise scalability. There are some key enhancements:
- Compliance Alignment: AWS’s broad range of global certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS) aligns seamlessly with Starbucks’ internal governance and industry regulatory standards.
- Security Visibility & Control: Services such as AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and AWS Security Hub provide centralized visibility, real-time monitoring, and automated compliance reporting.
- Governance & Accountability: Through AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies (SCPs), Starbucks enforces clear governance boundaries, role-based access, and policy consistency across accounts.
- Future-Ready Compliance: Continuous monitoring and automated audit workflows streamline compliance management and ensure readiness for evolving regulations.
- Disaster Recovery & Availability: While the current regional failover setup enhances availability, Starbucks plans to evolve toward a multi-cloud or hybrid DR strategy to fully meet enterprise continuity and resilience standards.
Testimonial
“Migrating our mobile application to AWS has significantly improved performance, scalability, and customer satisfaction. AWS’s reliable infrastructure enables us to deliver the Starbucks Experience consistently, both in-store and digitally.”
Alex Hong (Retail Technology Manager | Starbucks Malaysia)
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