Highlights
- A large resource company migrated a range of applications to AWS with the help of Mantel Group.
- The migration led to improved agility, project delivery, and improved data integration for higher visibility of key metrics.
- The company can now set up a Citrix environment in about 1 hour, a process that used to take multiple days.
The Problem
The client company is a group in the resource industry, committed to ecological transformation through sustainable waste, water, and energy initiatives. They are a very large business, with over 100,000 employees worldwide.
The problem this resource company faced was multifaceted, rooted in their need for digital transformation and the challenges that came with their existing technological infrastructure.
Firstly, the company needed to migrate their Citrix environment to the AWS Cloud as part of their digital transformation strategy. This has a number of benefits, including scalability, cost efficiency, and visibility of operations. Without the scalability offered by cloud environments, the company would have difficulty quickly adjusting their IT resources to meet changing demands.
In addition to the migration challenge, the company was grappling with a wide variety of enterprise SQL licences. These licences were part of their technology stack, which included SQL database servers, .NET applications, and Active Directory. The diversity of these licences led to high costs and management overhead. The company needed to find a way to consolidate these licences and reduce their costs.
The final obstacle was a lack of access to relevant, trustworthy data in a speedy manner. Data syncs previously took weeks to extract and ingest on premises. This process was a bottleneck for the company, hindering their ability to make timely, data-driven decisions. The company needed a solution that would allow them to transfer data daily across business units, improving their operational efficiency and decision-making process.
The Opportunity
This collection of problems posed an interesting opportunity.
Each issue increases the potential payoff received by accelerating the move to an industry-leading cloud infrastructure, furthering the business viability of addressing them all in a single engagement. Subsidising the increased business value of the cloud migrations and data solutions with the future cost-savings associated with consolidating licensing is a strategic move that not only addresses the immediate challenges, but also sets the stage for long-term operational efficiency.
The Solution
The large resource company, with the help of Mantel Group, migrated 34 applications to the AWS Cloud. They set up an AWS Landing Zone with multi-Availability Zone architecture for better disaster recovery capabilities. Amazon GuardDuty was implemented for threat protection and AWS Backup for centralised backup. A few databases were retired, and the remaining were consolidated in Amazon EC2 to reduce costs. Amazon RDS was adopted for enterprise workloads, and a data lake was built using Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and AWS Lake Formation.
The benefits of this solution include:
- Scalability and Flexibility: The migration to AWS Cloud provides the company with the ability to easily scale their IT resources based on demand, offering flexibility to adapt to changing business needs.
- Cost and Operational Efficiency: By consolidating their SQL databases and leveraging the pay-as-you-go model of AWS, the company significantly reduced their IT costs. The adoption of Amazon RDS and AWS automation capabilities also improved operational efficiency.
- Enhanced Disaster Recovery and Security: The multi-availability zone architecture of the AWS Landing Zone and the implementation of Amazon GuardDuty enhances the company’s disaster recovery capabilities and provides intelligent threat detection.
- Improved Data Management and Decision-Making: The creation of a data lake using Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and AWS Lake Formation improves data integration and visibility, enabling faster, more informed decision-making.
Our Approach
Planning: The company first partnered with Mantel Group, and discussed the issue at hand. Together, they planned an agile migration strategy, taking into account the company’s specific needs and challenges.
Setting up AWS Landing Zone: The next step was to set up an AWS Landing Zone, a pre-configured environment built for secure, scalable, and efficient cloud migrations. This included a multi-Availability Zone architecture to enhance disaster recovery capabilities.
Implementing Security Measures: Amazon GuardDuty was implemented, a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorised behaviour. The company also set up AWS Backup, a centralised service that automates data backup tasks.
Migrating Applications: With the infrastructure in place, the resource company, with the help of Mantel Group, began the process of migrating their 34 business-critical applications to the AWS Cloud. This was done using the CloudEndure Migration tool, which simplifies, expedites, and reduces the cost of cloud migration by offering a highly automated lift-and-shift solution.
Consolidating SQL Databases: During the migration process, Focus was placed on consolidating the company’s SQL databases. They retired some databases and migrated the remaining ones to Amazon EC2, significantly reducing their SQL licensing costs.
Adopting Amazon RDS: For their enterprise workloads, the company adopted Amazon RDS, a managed relational database service that provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks.
Building a Data Lake: A data lake was implemented using Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and AWS Lake Formation. This data lake improved data integration and visibility across the organisation, enabling faster, more informed decision-making.
