Consumer finance company resolves legacy technical debt with AWS

At a Glance

A consumer finance company needed to minimize outages and disruptions caused by legacy tech. It worked with Eviden to move its critical CRM application to a new home among multiple EC2 instances.

Outcomes

Enhanced system availability and performance
Reduced recovery times
Increased data security and compliance
Improved IT infrastructure cost-effectiveness

The Client

A leading, publicly traded consumer credit lender in North America

Aging systems take their toll

The finance company’s legacy systems, crucial for scalability and performance in managing customer relationships, struggled to keep pace with the evolving demands of the financial sector.

Frequent downtime and slow recovery not only compromised customer satisfaction but also posed significant risks to the management of critical customer data. Those risks extended to the company’s financial standing and reputation.

More alarmingly, this aging infrastructure couldn’t support the advanced security measures necessary for protecting sensitive customer data. It was failing to meet stringent financial industry regulations.

The financial burden of maintaining outdated systems, especially those handling business-critical applications like customer relationship management, along with the costs of operational disruptions, were proving inhibitive.

The finance company could no longer adapt swiftly to market changes or introduce new services; both crucial for staying competitive in the financial services industry.

Three steps to freedom from technical debt

The company worked with Eviden to enhance its IT architecture to support the CRM application. They designed and implemented a set of solutions to accomplish three main goals:

Optimize performance
Improve data security
Comply with financial regulations.

Why Eviden

Eviden is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and AWS Marketplace Seller supporting a global client base by bringing together people, business and technology. An 11-year AWS partner, Eviden has 14 AWS Competencies, including Migration Consulting, and is also a member of the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) and AWS Well-Architected Partner Programs.

Features of the new cloud-based infrastructure

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances: The CRM application is hosted on Amazon EC2 instances across multiple availability zones in a specific US region to ensure resilience and reduce downtime.
Network and connectivity enhancements: Subnet configurations were optimized for security and efficiency. A web application firewall (WAF) was employed to protect against common web exploits.
Load balancing: Application load balancers (ALBs) were used to distribute incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, enhancing the fault tolerance of the application.
Security measures: Security groups were meticulously configured to control inbound and outbound traffic, ensuring that only legitimate traffic can access the network resources.
Data protection and compliance: The infrastructure uses AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for disk encryption. Strategic backup schedules help the finance company adhere to its stringent recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 hour.
Monitoring and logging: The deployment relied on comprehensive monitoring via AWS CloudWatch to ensure ongoing operational health and performance.
Disaster recovery strategy: In a pilot light disaster recovery pattern, a minimal version of the new environment is always running in the cloud. This method enables rapid scaling to a full-scale production environment in case of a disaster.
Migration strategy: The migration took a replatforming approach to minimize changes to the core architecture while also optimizing it for cloud efficiency and scalability.

From debt-ladened to resilient

Enhanced system availability and performance
Following the migration, the company experienced a marked improvement in system reliability and performance. The implemented solutions ensured that the CRM application could handle increased transaction volumes without degradation in service quality.

Reduced recovery times
The pilot light disaster recovery pattern significantly reduced recovery time in the event of disruption.

Increased data security and compliance
With the new security measures and AWS infrastructure, the company achieved better data protection, meeting compliance requirements more effectively. Encrypted storage and controlled network access further strengthened security against potential breaches of sensitive customer data.

Cost-efficiency
The migration strategy and the ongoing management of cloud resources resulted in a more cost-effective use of IT infrastructure. By utilizing AWS services and optimizing resource allocation, the company lowered its operational costs while improving service delivery.

Operational agility
The new cloud infrastructure enhanced the company’s agility, allowing it to quickly adapt to market changes and customer needs. The ability to deploy new features and services faster significantly boosted its competitive edge in the financial services market.

Customer satisfaction
Improved system performance and reliability led to higher customer satisfaction levels. Seamless handling of customer relationships and transactions further enhance the user experience.