Global Financial Services Case Study

Project: Enterprise Cloud Readiness Assessment

Company: Global Financial Services

Industry: Financial Services

About Global Financial Services

Our client is the $30 billion financial arm of a global manufacturer with $300 billion in annual revenues, operating on six continents, supporting twelve divisions across 48 international markets.

Challenges

The company’s finance division was instructed to standardize on AWS globally, supporting all company subsidiaries, with little direction on how to move from an on-premise infrastructure to a cloud infrastructure. They were empowered to figure it out.

With no applications in production on AWS or the knowledge of how to set up a migration, the team formed a committee which represented each business unit to evaluate AWS partner options and ensure that the recommended solution would work for each division, creating a consistent experience regardless of location or business unit.

Previously, each business unit operated independently with little communication between them. The company realized this was costing them time, resources, and money which was a key driver in moving to the cloud. They had already selected AWS when EPLEXITY reached out to the CIO and engaged in exploratory technical discussions. These conversations were deep and specific in order to vet capabilities.

The company then set up an RFP to provide due diligence in making their decision. They understood they didn’t have the intellectual property internally to assess and plan the migration. A short list of potential partners was selected to respond to the RFP and each of the committee members had a vote to determine who would be selected.

Challenge 1

Minimal in-house migration expertise.

Challenge 2

Time, money, and resources wasted due to operational inefficiencies.

Challenge 3

Asses and plan the migration to AWS.

Solutions

EPLEXITY was selected over competition for their 360-degree, full AWS life-cycle approach that included both consulting and execution expertise. The project was to conduct a comprehensive Cloud Readiness Assessment that would outline best practices and provide the most efficient and effective solution for company globally.

The EPLEXITY Cloud Readiness Assessment provided our global financial client an essential framework and roadmap for adopting and migrating numerous enterprise applications to AWS and assessed more than 40 critical areas within the proposed AWS cloud environment, including Production, Disaster Recovery, DevOps, Security, Incident and Change Management, KPI & AMI management, Containers, Stress Testing and Service Catalog, and AWS Capacity Planning to name a few of the key areas.

The recommendation needed to layout the steps to migrate and illustrate how each business unit would be supported throughout the migration process. EPLEXITY engineers met with all business unit leaders and led two separate one-week discovery sessions with the key decision makers. The sessions were open, honest, and exceptionally productive.

After the meetings were completed, a full assessment report was prepared and presented. It was more than 60 pages with extensive documentation of their current baseline situation and detailed instructions using a red, yellow, and green color-coded index for migration priorities

Solution 1

EPLEXITY performed a pre-migration cloud readiness assessment.

Solution 2

A roadmap of adopting and migrating enterprise applications to AWS was presented.

Solution 3

Multiple discovery sessions occurred before presenting a full assessment report.

Results

Upon receiving the assessment, the client was thrilled with the level of detail and migration plan. The plan was then shared with each business unit outlining the tasks and requirements they would need to perform over the coming weeks. The assessment allowed the client to use their massive internal resources, who had no prior knowledge of AWS, to handle the migration.

Within the first month, they had pushed three applications to production, and two more complex applications migrated over the next two months. The assessment’s comprehensive guidance and subsequent success in migrating has led to multiple new engagements with both the corporate headquarters as well as other divisions within the company.