Challenge:
Horrocks Engineers, a provider of civil engineering solutions for infrastructure projects, faced challenges with its outdated, monolithic on-premises application. The application lacked scalability, resiliency, and efficient development workflows, which hindered the company's ability to manage complex projects effectively. With growing demand and evolving technology standards, Horrocks needed a modern, cloud-based infrastructure to support rapid application deployment, improve security, and optimize cost management.
They sought assistance to migrate their Construction Information Management System (CIMS) application to AWS, focusing on containerization, CI/CD workflows, and security to enhance operational efficiency, scalability, and security across their project management processes.
Solution:
We embarked on a comprehensive cloud migration and DevOps transformation of Horrocks' CIMS application to address their scalability, performance, and operational inefficiency challenges. The process was designed to modernize their infrastructure and streamline development workflows while ensuring long-term operational success.
1. Application Modernization: The existing monolithic application was broken down into microservices, which were containerized using Docker. This modular approach and ECS Fargate's auto-scaling capabilities allowed Horrocks to scale resources dynamically and improve application performance.2. Cloud Infrastructure & Database Modernization:
3. Automation & CI/CD Best Practices: We implemented CI/CD pipelines that automated container builds, testing, vulnerability scanning, and deployment across development, test, and production environments. This streamlined deployment process reduced manual efforts and ensured faster more reliable releases.
4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Using AWS CDK, we integrated Infrastructure as Code into Horrocks' deployment pipelines, enabling consistent, repeatable infrastructure provisioning and management and enhancing the overall agility of the development process.
5. Monitoring, Security, and Cost Optimization: To ensure the stability and security of the system post-migration, we implemented comprehensive AWS monitoring, security best practices, and cost optimization strategies. These measures provide real-time insights, help prevent issues, and ensure the system is cost-efficient.
6. DevOps, Cloud, and Security Training: We also provided training for Horrocks' employees in modern DevOps principles, managing workloads in the cloud, and how to properly secure those workloads to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to maintain and further optimize the environment in the future.
This approach resulted in a modern, cloud-native infrastructure that delivers improved scalability, performance, and security while significantly optimizing Horrocks overall application deployment and management processes.
Outcome:
This modernization made the application more performant, resilient, and agile. Load testing showed average response time was reduced by 46%, and maximum throughput more than doubled. Additionally, this project allows the application to be enhanced with further capabilities provided by AWS-managed services.