Challenge:

A leading investment firm sought to streamline their development process and accelerate their DevOps model. While they had successfully optimized their application architecture using Docker containers, their infrastructure remained on-premises, hindering developer agility. Spinning up new microservices locally was resource-intensive, slowing down development cycles. Additionally, IT decision-makers prioritized maintaining or improving their security posture while meeting strict compliance requirements.

Solution:

In January 2020, the investment firm partnered with Cloudfeds, a cloud migration and management expert, to address these challenges. Cloudfeds designed, built, and automated a secure and compliant infrastructure for the firm's content delivery platform on AWS.

Key Considerations:

• DevOps Acceleration: Migrating to a cloud-based infrastructure with automated provisioning capabilities eliminated the need for manual server setup. This empowered developers to quickly spin up new microservices, fostering a faster DevOps workflow.

• Robust Security: Even though the application did not process or store cardholder data, PCI-DSS security controls were implemented as a best practice for overall security governance. This ensured a secure environment while exceeding compliance requirements.

• Multi-VPC Architecture: Each AWS environment resided in a separate VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), ensuring isolation and enhanced security.

• Standardized Infrastructure: Canonical CloudFormation templates were used to provision the infrastructure in a consistent and repeatable manner, ensuring ease of management and future deployments.

• Centralized Services: A dedicated Utility VPC housed shared services like security tools, access controls, and configuration management, offering centralized control and simplified management.

• Leveraging Expertise: Partnering with Cloudfeds, who possessed extensive experience in architecting and deploying PCI-DSS compliant infrastructure, accelerated the migration process and ensured adherence to security best practices.

Results:

By migrating their content delivery platform to a secure and automated AWS environment built by Cloudfeds, the investment firm achieved significant benefits:

• Faster Development Cycles: Streamlined infrastructure provisioning with AWS facilitated rapid deployment of new microservices, accelerating the DevOps process.

• Enhanced Security: Implementation of best practices and PCI-DSS security controls strengthened the overall security posture of the platform.

• Improved Compliance: The cloud infrastructure adhered to strict compliance requirements, providing peace of mind for the investment firm.

Conclusion:

This case study demonstrates how Cloudfeds' expertise in cloud migration and secure infrastructure design empowered an investment firm to achieve faster development cycles, enhanced security, and improved compliance through a strategic cloud migration.