Published: Jan 01, 2021
public service collaboration system moved to AWS for improved performance and scalability
A public service agency was facing performance issues with its collaboration management system. Resources such as CPU and storage were running at maximum capacity, with ageing and unreliable hardware and software hosted in a traditional on-premises data centre. To improve performance and reliability and ensure scalability for future expansion without heavy new capital investments, the agency decided to migrate the workload to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to take advantage of the on-demand capabilities of the cloud.
About the customer
The NCS customer is a public service agency which had a collaboration management system running on ageing hardware and software hosted in an on-premise data centre.
Business needs
The agency was facing challenges with its public service collaboration management system due to the limited capacity of the existing configuration. During the original set-up, upfront investments were made in hardware and software, which became a limitation as they became obsolete over time, causing performance issues. And it was not possible to scale and expand the system to meet the public sector’s growing collaboration needs without heavy investments in new infrastructure and manpower.
The agency decided that a more viable solution would be to move the collaboration management system to the cloud, paving the way for better collaboration and future expansion.
Solution
NCS worked closely with the agency to move the system to Amazon Web Services (AWS), based on the AWS Well-Architected™ framework which describes the key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for designing and running workloads in the cloud. This would help to ensure operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency and cost optimisation.
A robust migration plan was developed and executed to move the public service collaboration management system to AWS. Best practices were also put in place to manage the system’s backend infrastructure on the AWS cloud.
Benefits
Eliminates the need for new capital investments
With the workload on AWS, the agency is able to harness resources on-demand with a pay-as-you-go model. This eliminated the need for large capital investments on hardware refresh or new purchases.
Reduces operational costs by right-sizing resources
By right-sizing their infrastructure, the agency can now improve utilisation by starting small and scaling when necessary. It also significantly reduces the total cost of ownership compared with the traditional hosting model as the agency need not own and invest in hardware, software as well as licences upfront.
Increases agility
The ability to provision resources on-demand also enables the organisation to respond quickly to changing business requirements whilst maintaining better control over the budget.
Reduces security and compliance risks
Timely patches and security updates on AWS ensure that the organisation is better protected against cyber security attacks and any risk of non-compliance with regulatory requirements. This allows the agency to use the system with peace of mind.
Provides for high availability and disaster recovery
AWS is a proven platform with three Availability Zones (AZs) in Singapore and many more in different geographic regions around the world. This provides the assurance of high availability and disaster recovery with minimal additional investment.
Future plans
With the system now hosted on AWS, the agency is able to scale the workload to meet future needs with minimal incremental investment. Additional capabilities such as disaster recovery can also be easily integrated by tapping into the AWS infrastructure should the need arise.