Private equity backed services firm rebuilds its cloud infrastructure

The project

This large multinational technology services firm, part of a private equity portfolio, was hosting hundreds of production applications and development environments in AWS and Azure, both its own and its clients’, with dozens of new applications added every year. Its cloud strategy was poorly understood and limited, and the firm was concerned it couldn’t support the short-term or long-term needs of an expanding business. It needed a strategy built to last: consistent, easy to manage, and ready for the flurry of projects on the horizon.

The challenges

• Complexity everywhere. The infrastructure carried projects for the firm’s own clients and sister organizations, each with its own SLAs, application architectures, and implementation stacks, spread across many accounts and multiple cloud providers.
• No downtime for the transition. SLAs and existing development timelines had to be maintained while everything moved, and the legacy hosting infrastructure had to be supported until the last application migrated.
• Strict budgets. The solution had to be cost-effective, not just elegant.

The solution

Winmill quickly learned the existing cloud infrastructure and immediately assumed responsibility for the SLAs and hosted architecture of several hundred production applications. In parallel, Winmill built a flexible, extensible cloud strategy across AWS and Azure with a firm emphasis on native cloud tools over third-party products.

Infrastructure shifted to serverless and managed services wherever possible, including static front ends, stateless REST APIs, and database resources. The back end was secured on a private-first, public-by-exception philosophy, with all outside traffic funneled through cloud-native web application firewalls and API gateways serving mobile, web, and command-line clients through stateless serverless functions. A centrally managed point-to-site VPN deploys to any number of virtual networks and cloud accounts through cloud-native automation. CI/CD moved to managed pipeline services that need no support infrastructure of their own, and deployment targets shifted from a complex clustering system on traditional virtual machines to natively scalable, fully cloud-integrated environments.

As part of Winmill’s standard delivery protocol, the new architectures were fully documented, with knowledge transfer to the client development teams to prevent technical silos.

The results

• Fast. The new cloud strategy was designed and implemented in two months. Within ten months, Winmill had migrated 100 percent of the existing applications and retired the disparate legacy infrastructures, meeting every SLA and project deadline along the way.
• Repeatable. New applications are built directly in the new infrastructure with native AWS and Azure tools, and applications the firm inherits through acquisition or from clients are deployed using documented, standardized methodologies.
• Cheaper to run. Because the architecture is standardized and highly automated, Winmill manages it with a small team, and the firm estimates the new architecture saves more than $250,000 a year.
• A growth engine. The firm is winning new business at an unprecedented pace, helped by a flexible, extensible, and proven hosting story it can show prospective clients.