App36 is a software creation platform, an App Builder like no other, shaping with your imagination to do amazing things.
With most of its internal skill focussed on product creation and management, J36 decided it was time to engage a partner to provide AWS pure play expertise, to remove associated business as usual dependencies from the J36 team.
The Challenge
J36 actively encourage, support and search out opportunities to develop products and services that help to address global challenges. As a business, J36 take concrete actions that include subsidising projects which deliver social or environmental benefit, contributing a portion of profits to charities aligned with the UN Development Goals, and training our workforce on sustainable practices.
Like most organisations, being clear to focus on these goals often means identifying related activities that could be out-tasked to in turn a specialist partner, to free up time and remove distractions.
With this clarity, and existing software products already deployed on AWS, it made logical sense to engage an approved AWS partner to assume responsibility for overall AWS platform activities, including the identification and management of enhancements to the platform.
Through collaborative conversations, the Softcat team were engaged and moved quickly to provide advice and expertise to help J36 explore how a managed service would integrate with its teams and deliver the required 24x7x365 skills.
Critical Success Factors
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Scalable AWS expertise
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Guidance on how to efficiently evolve the use of AWS including code deployment pipelines
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Incrementally evolve the platform
The Solution
With the objective clear, the engagement was similar to many other Softcat projects and thus highly repeatable – the key to not introducing lots of additional cost or delays.
The Softcat team, including project manager, lead site reliability engineer and Architect, started by assessing the current state of AWS platform and identifying the areas where we could improve it (security, architecture, reliability, cost).
Some typical minor changes were identified, such as removal of unused resources, from where onboarding into the managed service was completed. In addition, a key piece of work was undertaken to provide a more future proof process/mechanism for automated deployment of the infrastructure (CICD) tightly coupled with the web product code development and release process.
Softcat’s management of the platform ensures automation and reliability by leveraging aspects such as Terraform ssfor Infrastructure as Code, with GitHub to automate deployment workflow through a series of CI/CD pipelines leveraging a range of AWS native services including AWS Systems Manager, AWS Backup, AWS Lambda, and CloudWatch. This provides the optimum blend of scalable service support coupled with cloud native services.
Highlights
- 24x7x365 Support from Softcat’s AWS engineering (SRE) team
- Seamless onboarding into Softcat support
- Blended of Softcat shared service automation (CI/CD) in conjunction with AWS native services
The Benefits
The primary benefit is Softcat’s proactive PlatformOps to ensure that J36’s AWS hosted software products remain cost effective, secure and reliable. Associated benefits include:
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A highly automated and standardised AWS platform, with a Softcat 24x7x365 managed service for PlatformOps, to ensure continuous governance (architecture, commercial, security and reliability).
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The Softcat Cloud Management Platform to provide end-to-end visibility of the J36 AWS platform
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Adoption of Softcat standards for technology and process improvements enhanced the performance, resilience, and security of the AWS platform.