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Customer Story

Advanced Leverage DevOps Engineers, Accelerate Cloud Migration

Advanced, a leading management software supplier, migrated an acquisition to an in-house AWS infrastructure for greater efficiency, simultaneously upskilling its team
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Related services
Cloud 

Industry
Public & Utilities

Company
Xebia

Advanced is a dynamic business software and services provider with a 330m GBP turnover, 25,000+ customers and 2,700 employees. The company provides enterprise and market-focused solutions that allow its customers to reimagine what is possible, innovate in their sectors and improve the lives of millions of people. It delivers focused solutions for public sector, enterprise, commercial and health & care organizations that simplify complex business challenges and deliver immediate value. Advanced has a Cloud-first strategy that enables customers to drive efficiencies, make informed decisions, act with pace and meet challenges head-on.
Why
Advanced needed to migrate a newly acquired software company to self-managed cloud hosting
What
“Lift and Shift” migration required, with in-house team developing skills as they executed the project
How
Time and money efficiencies were gained, along with greater future development potential

Existing Infrastructure Costly, Lacked Control

When Advanced acquired Science Warehouse, a cloud-based SaaS developer, the organization already had an AWS Cloud infrastructure, however it was managed by a third party. This arrangement was expensive and didn’t allow for the control Advanced wanted. The third party’s database engine was also costly, whereas Advanced’s own solution used a free database engine, Postgres.

The company decided to take sole responsibility for the system and applications by migrating Science Warehouse to self-managed AWS hosting. Advanced also wanted to upskill its in-house teams to develop the required highly sought-after DevOps competencies, which would enable them to realize this objective.

Database Upgrade With Amazon Aurora

Advanced decided to work with Xebia on a ”Lift & Shift” migration to Amazon Web Services including upgrading the database engine to Postgres. 

The companies utilized Terraform to define the automated infrastructure, allowing easier system reconstruction along with greater control and consistency. The DevOps team divided the infrastructure into layers, enabling a clear definition of the infrastructure’s life cycle, before migrating the databases using the AWS Database Migration Service. 

The final Postgres database was made using Amazon Aurora PostgresSQL, ensuring high performance and availability. With the migration completed, Advanced adapted all its existing applications for PostgreSQL compatibility.

Throughout the process Advanced’s teams were able to develop their DevOps competencies alongside Xebia’s experienced team, ensuring the company’s knowledge objectives were also fulfilled.

“Perhaps our biggest gain was that, thanks to Xebia’s expert engineers, our DevOps teams have really enhanced their skillsets, giving us huge potential for future innovations.”
advanced
Jay Patel Head of DevOps, Advanced.

A Fast, Efficient Migration for the Future

The benefits of building a brand-new cloud infrastructure for Science Warehouse from scratch were immediately clear to Advanced. By tailoring the “Lift and Shift” migration model, Advanced completed the shift sooner than expected, gaining vital time benefits. Other efficiencies were gained by removing the third-party cloud management provider, meaning a faster time-to-market for DevOps, as well as more automated testing and deployment, which improved development speed.

Cost savings came from switching the database engine to Advanced’s free solution and moving away from the third-party administrator to being self-managed. The switch to AWS also meant future infrastructural development will be much easier and with greater control. Enhanced monitoring and performance insights will also allow faster and better error correction.

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