Introduction
In the financial services industry, agility, scalability, and security are paramount for success. Our client, a major financial institution specializing in investment research, faced the challenge of migrating their on-premises infrastructure and software platforms to the Microsoft Azure Cloud while meeting stringent customer requirements and deadlines. This success story illustrates our partnership with the client to achieve a seamless migration and unlock the full potential of cloud technology.
Analyzing the Problem
The client recognized the need to migrate their infrastructure from the Geneva data center to the Microsoft Azure Cloud to enhance agility, scalability, and security while reducing operational overhead and costs. However, the migration posed several challenges, including addressing cloud skills gaps, ensuring data security, and meeting risk-averse customer requirements. Additionally, the client sought to modernize their platform to leverage cloud-native services and achieve operational efficiencies.
Initial Challenges
Migrating the entire infrastructure and software platforms to Azure required careful planning and execution to minimize disruption to business operations and ensure data integrity. The client faced challenges such as legacy orchestration, manual deployment processes, and administrative overhead of managing on-premises customer environments. Furthermore, the need to address security, compliance, and scalability requirements added complexity to the migration process.
Our Solution
In collaboration with the client, Wissen proposed a comprehensive solution to address their migration objectives and modernize their platform:
Azure Cloud-Native Services: Leveraging Azure-managed services, we replaced the legacy orchestration layer with Azure Service Bus and utilized Azure-managed Kubernetes (AKS) service for container orchestration. Automated deployment processes using Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines streamlined containerization, Sonar scanning, and deployment.
Solution Assessment and Migration Execution: We conducted a thorough solution assessment to identify the right technology stack and framework for migration. By executing Azure Cloud Migration, we empowered the client's leadership with the necessary tools and insights to initiate a thoughtful and accelerated migration journey.
Platform Modernization: As part of the migration, we modernized the client's platform by converting applications into microservices. This approach enhanced fault tolerance, agility, and deployment speed while facilitating reuse across different business lines.
Operational Efficiencies: By standardizing and simplifying processes, leveraging Azure PAAS services, and adopting a CI/CD strategy, we achieved operational efficiencies, improved availability, scalability, and security, and enabled faster application deployment.
Key Results Achieved
The implementation of our Azure Cloud Migration solution delivered significant benefits for the client:
Speed & Agility: Rapid environment provisioning and application deployment enabled the client to respond quickly to changing market demands and customer requirements.
Disaster Recovery: A robust disaster recovery strategy ensured business continuity, with the ability to spin up the entire environment within two hours in the event of an outage.
Scalability & Network Performance: Azure's high scalability and network throughput facilitated seamless growth and enhanced user experience for customers and internal users.
Centralized Logging and Monitoring: Centralized logging and monitoring enabled faster troubleshooting and reduced downtime, enhancing operational efficiency and reliability.
Microservices Architecture: Converting applications into microservices improved fault tolerance, agility, and deployment speed, enabling the client to innovate and adapt to market changes more effectively.
Conclusion
Through strategic collaboration and innovative solution design, we successfully migrated our client's infrastructure to the Microsoft Azure Cloud, unlocking the benefits of agility, scalability, and security. This success story underscores the transformative impact of cloud migration and platform modernization in driving operational excellence and supporting business growth in the financial services industry.
