Insights

AWS migration lowers total cost of ownership for automotive manufacturer

THE CHALLENGE

Our customer planned to move one of its US facilities and needed to vacate their existing data center. Among other services, the data center housed a business-critical vehicle configuration service that enables customers to build their vehicle online. A portfolio of 80-90 sub-applications comprises the service, many of which had been developed using legacy technology, including unsupported versions of JBoss. The service had accumulated substantial technical debt over the years.

But moving the service—and the infrastructure required to support it—to a new data center required a massive capital investment in licensing fees and hardware. They needed a solution they could afford—one that could also set them up for future application modernization.

THE SOLUTION

Rather than shifting the vehicle configuration service to another data center, Beyondsoft proposed a more cost-effective approach: moving it to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This would enable them to forego expensive licensing and hardware costs. They would also reap advantages such as high availability as well as greater flexibility and scalability. It would also position the manufacturer to refactor their service in the future to leverage continuous innovation and the full benefits of the cloud.

Beyondsoft practitioners used AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to create multiple environments including development, testing, staging, and production. To enable high availability and load balancing, these environments were distributed across two regions.

The new architecture uses a host of AWS services. Amazon CloudFront provides the content delivery network. Both the application and web layers run on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon S3 handles logging. Logs older than 90 days are backed up to Amazon Glacier for long-term storage. Amazon CloudWatch monitors instances and issues alerts. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) maintains application layer content and logs as well as web layer content and logs.

Finally, because the service must still connect to other on-premise services, AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection to the Phoenix data center. Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) provides permissions management to ensure secure access to all their resources in the cloud.

RESULTS

Thanks to the AWS migration, our customer has reaped multiple benefits. They’ve also positioned themselves to refactor their vehicle configuration service in the future to leverage the full capabilities of AWS.

• Reduced migration costs: By not migrating to another physical data center, the money they saved in licensing fees and hardware costs paid for their migration to AWS.
• Lower total cost of ownership: The cost of maintaining the AWS environment is lower than the cost to support the on-premise infrastructure.
• Easier to support: Because AWS manages the hardware and system, the company can focus on simply managing the data, saving time, money, and resources. Additionally, the solution leverages a fully managed database service, reducing the strain on existing staff.
• High availability architecture: The use of multiple availability zones minimizes downtime when issues arise.
• Increased flexibility and agility: Thanks to the dynamic cloud infrastructure, applications can be scaled vertically.

TECHNOLOGIES USED

AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), AWS Direct Connect, Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM)

OUR EXPERIENCE

Beyondsoft has performed hundreds of data and application migrations for large enterprise customers. Our certified practitioners have hands-on, best-practice knowledge of all the major platforms. As an AWS Data Migration Competency Partner, Beyondsoft has invested in building deep proficiency on the AWS platform.

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