A digital content organization for schools migrated to its own AWS environment ahead of the new school cycle. It regained control of its infrastructure and, as reported by the client, cut spending by 65% for the same scope.
The platform distributed digital textbooks, both its own and third-party, for different school cycles. Although it ran on AWS, the infrastructure was managed by an external provider, and changes were requested through tickets.
Limited access to resources and provider response times made it difficult to serve customers and roll out improvements. On top of that, spending was straining the available budget.
The organization wanted to take ownership of its infrastructure. However, the documentation did not reflect every service and dependency in use, and the volume of encrypted content added complexity to the migration.
I took over the assessment, the architecture definition, the implementation of the new environment and the execution of the migration, coordinating the transition with the incumbent provider and the client's technical team.
The work included an AWS landing zone owned by the organization and the progressive provisioning of resources, adjusting capacity to service requirements and transaction volume. That review made it possible to address the oversizing of the previous environment.
Migrating content between Amazon S3 buckets combined backup practices, native AWS tools and a review of the encryption dependencies with AWS KMS. Deploying the applications also required updating certificates, synchronizing third-party services and adding undocumented components that were necessary for the platform's performance.
The project ran for four months. The go-live was organized into coordinated windows based on the dependencies of the transition. I accompanied the internal team through the software configurations, while their validation of internal and external systems helped identify and resolve pending adjustments.
The organization started the new school cycle on its own AWS environment. The start of operations confirmed that the platform and the systems validated by the client's team were working as expected.
The result combined three advances:
The transition aligned the architecture and the way infrastructure is managed with the autonomy the business needed to move forward.
I welcome exchanging perspectives on infrastructure transitions, AWS migrations and the challenges that come with the evolution of platforms.
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