Capgemini Earthlings Ecopreneur (CEE) is such a platform that addresses this need. This is a portal that can be accessed only by the employees of Capgemini and is thus compliant to all regional standards such as GDPR. Everyone, as an employee, has equal right to create an individual mission (pertaining to Capgemini & UN Goal) and anyone, who is also an employee, can join in. The mission can be a digital mission e.g., a sustainable solution deployed for a client or a POC, or something as simple as cleaning the personal storage, or a social mission like planting a tree or ocean cleaning. The joiners can then forecast the KPIs that they are looking forward to achieving and at the end of the mission will update it with the actual result. The system then analyzes the impact of the mission once that is completed.

In this post, we will share an architectural reference from Capgemini for a solution that can help solve challenges in an employee portal exclusively dedicated for sustainability missions. The solution is resilient, scalable and uses multiple services, data, and asynchronous communication managed completely in the Google Cloud Platform.

What problem do we wish to solve?

Most of the internal portals of an organization primarily act a webpage with information regarding that organization and that may also support some synchronous request/responses with other internal or external hosts.

A few other applications are primarily COTS employee applications that are configured and customized for a specific employee usage like payroll or time reporting.

However, almost no organizations have an exclusive employee application solely dedicated to the cause of sustainability. We from Capgemini felt it is utmost important to have an application which will only serve the cause of sustainability, make each employee feel empowered so that we all can contribute effectively to the net zero goal that the Capgemini Group has set.

Hence for a sensitive subject like Net Zero and Capgemini Group’s vision to come to work in reality, we needed our own solution catered to our visions & exclusive strategic needs.

Capgemini Earthlings Ecopreneur (CEE) is a portal solution for all our employees that acts as a one stop platform for whole group to ENGAGE on Sustainability. It is a single pane of glass for all the sustainability related work that all the employees in Capgemini Sweden can do and is one of its kind in the group and outside.

Here all employees engage on a cause that is close to their heart, whenever they can. Every step taken by any employee towards sustainability counts in the Group’s overall objective.

The cloud that proudly proclaims to be the ‘cleanest cloud in the industry’ naturally was our preferred platform for implementation of our sustainability portal solution. Capgemini Group has a rich history of great relationship with Google Cloud. With a multicultural team of 300,000 people in 40+ countries, we have more than 100+ GCP certifications in Sweden alone.

Non-Functional Requirements

This portal is for all global employees, hence some of the key NFRs are

• Simplicity
• Ease of use
• GDPR Compliance for Users in Europe
• Scalability

About Capgemini’s Solution

We have created the Capgemini Earthlings Ecopreneur solution using GCP that is built on a polyglot service architecture using primarily React Framework in the Front end and services written in Java in the backend. Here all communications are in real-time asynchronous mode which ensures eventual data consistency and higher scalability.

The solution is following the 3-tier architectural model with clear separation of the view/presentation layer from the backend service and data layer. There are 3 distinct tiers in this application architecture – Presentation tier, application/business tier (handled with multiple APIs), and Data tier. The API first design methodology is adopted. All UI elements are interacting with the persistent data stores through various APIs created, optimized, and made reliable for information retrieval.

Presentation Tier

This is the topmost level of the application. This tier directly interacts with end users through user interfaces. Interactive user interfaces which enrich the user experiences for portal front-end is designed with latest React library and based on reusable components.

API driven Application/Business Tier

The API-first architectural modelling starts with the API design kept at the top. The API centric design and development adds some components into the overall architecture for better management. The APIs are deployed into a managed containerized environment in Google Cloud Platform Cloud Run. The APIs are developed in Java based REST services.

Data Tier

The application persistent storage will be managed through Google Cloud Platform’s Firestore which is a managed, scalable NO-SQL database.

Solution Architecture

User Interaction Diagram

1. End user will create a new mission by selecting a mission template. Each mission template is associated with a specific Capgemini goal which may serve one or more UN goals. While creating a mission, user must provide a forecast on the mission KPI.. Each mission must have an end date after which mission is no longer active and final report is calculated.
2. After creating a mission, it will go to the admin for approval.
3. If everything is OK, then admin will validate the forecasted KPI values based on the type of the mission. Based on these KPI values, the system will generate actual report once mission gets completed.
4. Once mission is approved other users can view and join it.
5. User who joins a mission must provide information related to the mission KPI.
6. Admin can approve a mission and reviews the KPI related information.
7. Mission is closed on the end date or if mission creator wishes to complete the mission if mission objective is reached.

Once a mission is closed, the actual KPI metrics are compared against the forecasted ones and system generates the final report. This report on the portal provides valuable inputs on how much contribution is made towards our sustainability objectives. Note: There are several other services e.g. sharing a mission (using social media channel) and reacting or commenting against a mission.

How the solution works

SSO

We are using PING SSO for user (employee) authentication and that has been implemented via a node.js service. Capgemini Earthlings Ecopreneur(CEE) application is protected under an authentication guard It first checks if the user is authorized or not, if not then user is redirected to Capgemini Single SignOn URL. After internal verification, it will be redirected to CEE portal. Two node.js service endpoints are used here to generate token  for fetching user information to be used in our solution as per GDPR compliance.

Compliance – GDPR

This is taken care by the infrastructure, configuration, encryption, and redaction in GCP platform and our data retention policies which are GDPR compliant.

List of Java Services

GCP Core Services used in the solution

Cloud Run

All services in CEE solution are deployed using Cloud Run. It is serverless and supports easy deployment of containerized microservices, written in any language, and can be invoked via requests or events.

Cloud Service Account

Access control in CEE platform is managed by Service Accounts. It represents a non-human privileged account that is used to execute applications and run automated services on Google Cloud Platform and ensures deployments are independent of users and admins.

Cloud Logging

Application logs of CEE are stored and managed in Google Cloud Logging. It is a fully managed service that allows to store, search, analyze, monitor, and alert on logging data and events from Google Cloud and from over 150 common application components, on-premises systems, and hybrid cloud systems.

Cloud Pub/Sub

All real-time asynchronous communication in CEE solution is handled via Google Cloud Pub/Sub. It is a no-ops, secure, scalable messaging that allows services to communicate asynchronously and enables creation of event producers and consumers.

Cloud Storage

All static images used in CEE portal are stored in Cloud Storage. It is a low-cost, scalable, reliable, and secure object data storage service in GCP that supports object life cycle management and retrieval in any desired frequency.

Cloud Firestore

The mission related data of CEE solution is managed in Firestore. It is a cloud-hosted, NoSQL database that web apps can access easily and directly via REST or native language SDKs.

Cloud BigQuery

The data needed for analysis in CEE application are managed in BigQuery. It has a flexible architecture that supports access to data on-demand with high performance queries and offers an amazing scale-friendly pricing structure.

Summary

Capgemini Earthlings Ecopreneur solution is a one-stop platform for every single sustainability related endeavor by all Capgemini employees built on a modern API First Approach and supporting real-time asynchronous integration on Google Cloud Platform. The architecture is completely language agnostic and capable to support theoretically infinite number of sustainable activities of 300000+ employees globally. This is also one centralized place for the management to set and measure the KPIs in terms of how many employees participated as sustainability volunteers individually or from a team and measure the Co2 impact of the mission that employees create and collaborate in a specific region or time. Powered by Google Cloud, the core USP of the solution lies in its simplicity. Anyone who wishes to have an exclusive portal for their employees to work on sustainability goals can easily adopt this solution. The solution is also capable of providing an easily readable dashboard for the management to view and analyze various sustainability KPIs, especially from voluntary participation of passionate employees which are otherwise not tracked in an organization. These are little steps, but important ones for a better future. And what better platform than Google Cloud Platform that uses 100% renewable energy on all cloud regions! Remember, there are no alternate plans for our planet. We must plan and act NOW.

Learn more about the power of our Google Cloud partnership.

Technology makes life simple. As simple as a car that drives itself. A retail store with no check-out. A voice assistant that understands your intent. As simple as a phone that unlocks when you look at it. A web shop that already knows what you’d like to buy. A social media app that filters tons of news for you. As simple as a tweet that can rule the world.

As in the best Yin & Yang tradition, all that simplicity and comfort comes with a price.

First of all, the most seamless, simplified experiences require a lot of complexity to be dealt with. It typically involves Artificial intelligence, process automation, smart things, collaboration tooling and mixed reality. There will be an amalgamation of new and existing systems, data flows, communication channels and infrastructure.

Secondly, simplicity makes shallow. We may tend to take for granted what is behind a newsflash, a video clip, a recommendation or an automated decision. With the dazzling complexity of our technology-infused lives, the comfort of something else taking care of it all is tempting. Even if it means we no longer have a clue about the mechanisms or insights that are behind it. Even if our attention span seems to shrink by the day (oh hi again, goldfish).

However, simplicity hits a concrete wall when we lose trust – for example when we suspect news is fake, an algorithm is biased, sensors are malfunctioning, or we simply feel we are being followed and monitored for the wrong purposes.

It’s a tall order for IT and Enterprise architects to balance the paramount, crazy complexity of changing technology and systems with the need to create calm oases of simplicity on top of it. And even if they manage to do so, they need to explain their architectures in a way that creates trust and just enough insight for all involved to embrace and adopt it.

We already know for years that huge, multi-layered schematic diagrams are not fit for this purpose – other than as a secret language among architects themselves. And no, even storytelling is not an efficient enough alternative anymore, because – you know – attention span.

We should resort to what currently turns out to be the most powerful communication tool available: the 140-character tweet. If you can’t tweet it, it won’t cut it. Within our company, we have been experimenting for some time now with a training workshop format which we call ‘Tweet My Architecture’: bringing back the essence of an Enterprise or IT architecture to tweet level and then taking no more than 30 seconds on a soapbox to explain the rationale behind it.

If nothing else, it is a humbling and refreshing learning experience to be at this tweet level. But it can be so much more than that, as we are delicately balancing simplicity, complexity and trust.

So, hashtag tweetmyarchitecture it is. We’d love to see a little wave of shared tweet architectures out there. When it comes down to it, what would your #tweetmyarchitecture statement look like?

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Ron Tolido

Expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and TechnoVision, Insights and Data, IT Strategy Transformation

I absorb technology and business trends, then filter out what matters for impact. I guide our global clients in understanding and embracing breakthrough technologies such as AI and autonomous systems to radically innovate and transform their business.
I am a certified master architect, IT strategist, publicist, speaker and executive lecturer at several universities.
I am also the lead author of Capgemini’s yearly TechnoVision trend series and a frequent co-author of Capgemini Research Institute publications.