What Is Platform Modernization? Future-Proofing Ecommerce Success
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If you are running an e-commerce platform with millions of SKUs, your search engine is probably one of your top three infrastructure costs.
Retailers relying on Lucidworks Fusion often pay $250k to $500k per year in licenses plus $180k to $300k in infrastructure, only to be locked into a vendor that dictates their pace of innovation.
RBMsoft has helped retailers reduce search costs by 60 to 80 percent by migrating to OpenSearch, while maintaining or improving search quality, speed, and personalization.
If you’re running an e-commerce platform with millions of SKUs, you know search isn’t just a feature—it’s your revenue engine. But here’s what most CTOs don’t realize: your search platform might be your biggest hidden cost center.
Consider this real case study: A retailer with moderate traffic was running Lucidworks Fusion with 47 nodes and 24 replicas per index, burning through nearly $1 million annually. The kicker? They only needed about 10% of that infrastructure to deliver the same performance.
The wake-up call came when they realized:
Sound familiar?
Real savings from companies that made the switch:
| Metric | Lucidworks Fusion | OpenSearch | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual license fees | $250k–$500k | $0 (open source) | 100% savings |
| Infrastructure cost | $180k–$300k | $80k–$120k | 60%+ savings |
| Vector search speed | Baseline | 9.5× faster | +850% |
| Index build speed (GPU) | Baseline | 9.3× faster | +830% |
| Storage use | 100% | 66% | –33% |
| Time to deploy new features | Months | Weeks or days | 3–4× faster |
You’re in the sweet spot if you have:
The perfect storm driving migration:
Common fears vs. reality:
❌ Fear: “Migration will take 12+ months and cost millions”
✅ Reality: Most migrations complete in 8-16 weeks with proper planning
❌ Fear: “We’ll lose critical functionality”
✅ Reality: OpenSearch offers feature parity plus new capabilities
❌ Fear: “Our team doesn’t have the expertise”
✅ Reality: Strong community support plus specialized consultancies like RBMsoft
Week 1-2: Assessment and planning Week 3-6: Data export and schema mapping
Week 7-10: Pipeline rebuilding and testing
Week 11-14: Query optimization and tuning
Week 15-16: Go-live and monitoring setup
Companies migrating now gain several first-mover advantages:
For a typical mid-size e-commerce company:
Plus intangible benefits: faster innovation, better search relevance, improved customer experience
The enterprise search market is at an inflection point. Companies that act now will:
Those who wait will continue paying premium prices for commodity functionality while competitors race ahead with modern, cost-effective search solutions.
If you’re spending $200K+ annually on search infrastructure, you have three options:
Ready to explore option 3?
At RBMsoft, we’ve helped dozens of mid-size e-commerce companies successfully migrate from expensive proprietary platforms to high-performance OpenSearch implementations. Our proven methodology reduces risk, accelerates timelines, and ensures you capture maximum value from day one.
Contact us for a free search infrastructure assessment and discover your potential savings within 48 hours.
RBMsoft specializes in helping mid-size e-commerce companies optimize their search infrastructure for performance, cost, and agility. Our migration methodology has helped companies save over $50M in combined search infrastructure costs while improving search relevance and speed.
