An education provider is set to exit its ageing data centre thanks to Kinetic IT’s rebuild of its misaligned Amazon Web Services (AWS) landing zone.
Problem
The customer’s AWS landing zone had not been configured to meet their unique requirements, resulting in operational issues and an environment ill-suited for their data centre exit.
Solution
Leveraging our deep understanding of the customer’s needs, Kinetic IT reengineered the AWS landing zone to seamlessly integrate with existing systems and processes.
Outcome
The customer has achieved a rapid reset and now operates an optimised AWS landing zone that will accommodate their upcoming data centre migration.
Customer Background
The customer is an education provider, responsible for the provision of education services to the population of a large Australian state. The organisation leverages technology to improve educational delivery and systems access across metropolitan and regional areas. The successful delivery of these objectives requires a significant ICT presence across the state.
To reduce risks and costs, and to take advantage of modern technology, the customer chose to exit its on-premises data centres and migrate fully to the cloud. Guided by Kinetic IT’s cloud experts, the customer is now ready to start their transformative journey.
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The Problem
Many of the customer’s core ICT services operate from a central on-premises data centre that has aged to the point of being extremely costly to maintain. The on-premises data centre requires ongoing maintenance and upgrades to supporting infrastructure including air conditioning units, monitoring devices, fire prevention and uninterruptable power supplies, including diesel generators. As a result, the customer decided that migrating to an AWS cloud service would be a more cost-effective solution.
The customer engaged a vendor to set up an AWS landing zone for their migration. A landing zone is important because it provides a solid foundation with security measures and network configurations, making it easier to deploy workloads and applications on the AWS cloud. However, the customer was not fully aware of some important system integration requirements needed for their IT services and this vital information was absent from the initial project scope. As a result, although the vendor delivered what the customer initially asked for, the landing zone ended up being unsuitable for the customer’s migration plans.
Kinetic IT assumed responsibility for this landing zone as part of an ongoing engagement to deliver managed IT services to the customer and facilitate their data centre exit. The limitations of the landing zone surfaced within the first month of implementation, causing significant operational issues that had widespread impacts across the organisation. Code stopped deploying, which left Kinetic IT’s technicians unable to perform critical tasks such as provisioning new accounts or implementing changes within the AWS environment. This not only affected the customer’s current operations but also left them unprepared for their planned data centre exit.
Recognising the criticality of the landing zone’s performance in delivering seamless IT services to the customer and reaching their transformation objectives, Kinetic IT embarked on an intensive reengineering project. Our objective was clear: To reach the desired outcome swiftly and with minimal disruption to the customer.
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The Solution
To understand the root causes of the code failures, the team reverse-engineered the AWS landing zone to understand how it was configured. This activity revealed three key areas of concern:
- The code implemented by the vendor failed to scale effectively in an enterprise environment and was, in many cases, outdated, end-of-life or had not properly accounted for dependencies.
- There was a disconnect between the landing zone and the existing processes that are essential for supporting the customer’s ICT environment and delivering seamless IT services to the business.
- The landing zone was not technically current, meaning the customer could not take advantage of the latest features and updates provided by AWS.
Kinetic IT is committed to delivering meaningful outcomes that empower our customers to advance their businesses. As the managed service provider that would be supporting the customer’s AWS environment and facilitating their data centre exit, we have developed a thorough understanding of their ICT landscape and their business objectives.
Applying this customer-centric, outcomes-focused approach, the Kinetic IT team successfully addressed the operational issues by rolling back, uplifting, and redeploying code to ensure the continuity of the customer’s operations. Moreover, we leveraged our understanding of the customer’s objectives to ensure the AWS landing zone was equipped to support their data centre exit and can serve as a foundation for continual optimisation and modernisation of their cloud environment.
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The Outcome
Kinetic IT tailored its solution to align perfectly with the customer’s processes and landing zone requirements. Leveraging our deep understanding of their needs and business operations, we expedited the achievement of their desired outcome: establishing a viable AWS landing zone in preparation for data migration. Our comprehensive knowledge enabled Kinetic IT to optimise the existing solution, resulting in a fast and effective delivery. Furthermore, we carefully aligned the solution with the customer’s IT operating model, ensuring seamless integration with service providers throughout the organisation.
With Kinetic IT’s AWS landing zone solution, our engineers can now focus more on deploying and less on debugging. This empowers the customer to confidently concentrate on migrating their data to AWS and eventually retiring their on-premises infrastructure.
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Find out more about how we partner with AWS to help Australian organisations securely transition to the cloud and succeed in today’s digital world.
