Ferdia, established in 2016 and headquartered in Oslo, is at the forefront of reinventing the European tour bus industry, ushering in a transformative approach to bus travel. The company recognizes the inherent sustainability and communal benefits of bus transportation. Despite the prevalence of empty bus seats, many individuals still opt for cars due to the challenges in locating, reserving, and managing bus services.

To address these challenges, Ferdia has implemented a groundbreaking two-sided market platform. This innovative solution not only streamlines the operational processes of bus companies but also ensures the delivery of high-quality travel services. The strategic use of this platform has resulted in increased bus utilization, improved margins, and enhanced overall operational efficiency for bus partners. Simultaneously, travelers benefit from convenient access to novel carpooling solutions.

This symbiotic ecosystem is designed to serve the interests of travelers, bus companies, and the environment alike. Ferdia’s commitment to creating a seamless and sustainable travel experience underscores its mission to revolutionize the European tour bus industry, offering an integrated solution that is both environmentally conscious and user-friendly.

The client sought to create an innovative travel system that transcended traditional experiences, envisioning a platform where users could effortlessly plan and share adventures. They aimed to simplify the complex processes of finding, booking, and organizing personalized travel services.

In addition, the client desired a touch of luxury, allowing users to reserve preferred seats and customize their journey. Offering diverse payment options was crucial for delivering a premium travel experience. A sophisticated ticketing system was also essential to ensure efficiency throughout the travel process.

Furthermore, the client aimed for a technologically advanced system that prioritized security. They sought to incorporate DevOps best practices to architect a platform that epitomized innovation, scalability, and security in the rapidly evolving landscape of modern technology.

A platform is developed that is based on serverless and pub-sub architecture. This allows users to easily create and book trips, make payments, and share trips with others in a highly scalable way. To handle user authentication and authorization, we implemented Amazon Cognito. We also used Amazon DynamoDB to store business information, and Amazon AppSync to expose the data through a GraphQL interface.

To handle the payment process, we integrated with Vipps, a popular payment service in the Norway region. Alongside, Vipps we implemented Stripe as the business expands in several regions e.g., Sweden and Denmark. These allowed users to easily make payments for their trips within the software. We used Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store and process images of trips that were uploaded by the user. For every ticket, a QR code is generated automatically and attached to the PDF downloadable ticket. These QR codes could be scanned at the bus terminal to verify the ticket and grant access to the bus.

For the front-end, we used Vue.js to build a responsive and intuitive interface for users. We implemented GraphQL to provide a flexible and efficient way for the front-end to access data stored in DynamoDB. The team added several features to improve user experience. such as image processing to optimize the display of photos on the platform. We utilized AWS Secrets Manager to securely store and manage sensitive information and secrets, such as API keys and Vipps credentials. To handle the workflow of creating and booking trips, the team used Amazon Event Bridge and AWS Lambda functions written in GO and Python and used the Velocity Template Language (VTL) for querying directly from DynamoDB through AppSync. These allowed them to build custom business logic and automate processes such as sending notifications to users by SES, and SNS and orchestrating the various microservices that make up the system.

We use strong encryption to keep the data safe both when it’s stored and when it’s moving around in our system. When the data is on the move, we exclusively use the HTTPS protocol, which adds an extra layer of protection by encrypting it from start to finish. To make things even more secure, we use SSL/TLS certificates from Amazon Certificate Manager. This ensures that the data exchanged between EC2 instances and CloudFront stays confidential and intact, giving you peace of mind about your information’s safety.

In our automation practices, we harnessed the power of Terraform to efficiently create AWS resources, employing a separate codebase for seamless management. For streamlining continuous integration and deployment across diverse environments, we adopted both GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines. Leveraging Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), we hosted container images seamlessly originating from both GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines. To handle specific serverless workloads with diverse service integrations, we utilized AWS Lambda, adding versatility to our automation workflow.

• Cognito
• AppSync
• DynamoDB
• EventBridge
• Lambda
• API Gateway
• Secret Manager
• IAM
• AppConfig
• Cloudfront
• Route53
• SEM
• SNS
• SES
• SQS
• S3

Since launching the software platform, this company has seen significant improvements in their operations. The automation provided by the AWS services has reduced the time and effort needed to manage trips, allowing them to handle a larger volume of bookings. The social login feature and integration with Vipps have also made it easier for users to sign up and make payments.

Additionally, the use of QR codes has improved the security and accuracy of the ticket verification process, ensuring that only valid tickets are accepted at the bus terminal. Overall, the custom software solution has helped to streamline the business and provide a better experience for their users.

Visit Cloud-23.com today, to learn more about our Cloud Related Information