commercetools: Gradion provides the Vietnam leg of a global follow-the-sun infrastructure team. Full daytime coverage keeping a world-leading commerce platform operational.
Snapshot
Client
commercetools GmbH
Industry
E-commerce SaaS / Platform Technology
Geography
Global infrastructure; Gradion’s team operates from Vietnam (APAC daytime coverage)
Size
$1.9B valuation; $75B+ annualized GMV; 500M+ orders/year; Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader 5 consecutive years
Challenge
24/7 global cloud operations for an enterprise SaaS platform
Services
Cloud Infrastructure Operations, Platform Monitoring & Incident Response, DevOps Engineering, Follow-the-Sun Coverage (APAC leg)
Duration
Ongoing
Team
Not specified
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Client Context
commercetools processes more than $75 billion in annualized GMV and handles over 500 million orders per year for enterprise retailers across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for five consecutive years, the platform underpins the e-commerce operations of some of the world’s most demanding retailers - including five of the top ten global car manufacturers, and major brands across fashion, beauty, and consumer goods. When an enterprise retailer’s storefront runs on commercetools, every checkout, every product view, every cart interaction depends on the platform being up. Platform instability at 3 AM in Munich is still 3 AM somewhere - and for a US retailer’s prime shopping hours, or an APAC brand’s morning peak, it is a live revenue event. True 24/7 platform reliability cannot be delivered by a single team working shifts. It requires genuine operational presence across time zones. commercetools solves this through a follow-the-sun model: three teams, each responsible for running global platform operations during their daytime hours. When one team ends its day, the next picks up a live, running system - not a handover brief, but active responsibility.
The Challenge
Follow-the-sun operations only work if every leg of the model operates at the same standard. A strong US team and a strong Germany team deliver nothing if the Vietnam shift is a monitoring-only function that escalates everything. The platform’s SLA commitments do not change based on which team is on shift. Enterprise clients do not experience a lower tier of service because it is currently daytime in Southeast Asia. Building a genuinely capable infrastructure operations team in Vietnam - engineers who can respond to incidents, manage infrastructure at scale, understand the commercetools platform deeply, and make decisions without waiting for European business hours - requires exactly the kind of technical talent and operational discipline that is difficult to find and difficult to retain. commercetools needed a partner who could provide that operational leg reliably, at the standard the platform demands, without the overhead of building and managing a Vietnam-based engineering function from scratch.
The Approach
Gradion provides the Vietnam leg of commercetools’ follow-the-sun operations model. During APAC daytime hours, Gradion’s team is responsible for the full global platform - not a subset of it, not a monitoring queue, but active operational ownership of the same infrastructure the US and Germany teams run during their shifts. The model is genuinely circular. The US team hands over to Germany at the end of their day. Germany hands over to Gradion’s Vietnam team at the end of theirs. Gradion runs through the APAC daytime and hands back to the US. The platform is under active operational care at every point in this cycle. What this requires from Gradion is not just availability, but depth. The team must understand the commercetools infrastructure well enough to diagnose and resolve issues, manage platform health proactively, and respond to incidents with the same speed and judgement that the client expects from its own internal engineers. Gradion engineers who work in this model are not contractors on call - they are part of the operational structure of a $1.9 billion platform. The arrangement gives commercetools three things that cannot be easily built otherwise: genuine APAC timezone coverage, a team with the operational depth to match internal standards, and the flexibility to scale operational capacity without the lead time and overhead of expanding an internal headcount in a new geography.
24/7
platform operations maintained - the three-team follow-the-sun model provides co
$75B+
annualized GMV protected - the platform Gradion helps operate processes more tha
The Results
24/7 platform operations maintained - the three-team follow-the-sun model provides continuous active coverage, not monitoring-with-escalation. Every shift is a live operational shift. $75B+ annualized GMV protected - the platform Gradion helps operate processes more than $75 billion in transactions annually. Operational reliability at this scale has zero margin for a low-quality coverage leg. Enterprise SLA commitments upheld across time zones - commercetools’ commitments to its enterprise clients do not vary by time of day. Neither does Gradion’s operational standard. APAC daytime coverage delivered without internal headcount expansion - commercetools gains genuine Vietnam-timezone operational depth through Gradion, without building and managing a Vietnam office from scratch. Sustained operational partnership - the engagement requires continuous knowledge of a complex, evolving platform. Gradion’s team has developed the institutional depth that makes the model work. Follow-the-sun only works when every team in the model operates at the same level. Gradion’s Vietnam team is not the junior leg of this operation. It is one third of how commercetools keeps its platform running for the world.
Services & Technology
Services delivered
- Cloud Infrastructure Operations
- Platform Monitoring & Incident Response
- DevOps Engineering
- Follow-the-Sun Coverage (APAC / Vietnam daytime leg)
- SLA-aligned operational support
- Infrastructure health management and proactive maintenance
- Coverage model
- Three-team global rotation: US - Germany - Vietnam (Gradion)
- Full operational responsibility per shift - not monitoring-only
- Active handover between teams at each shift boundary
Technology stack
- Custom technology stack
Engagement model
Dedicated operational team - one leg of a global follow-the-sun model
Talk to us about providing operational coverage in time zones your internal team cannot reach.
Describe the coverage gap. We will scope the operational model.