Optimizing Finance Solutions with SaaS and Data Modernization

Outdated Legacy Systems

The primary customer-facing website was initially released more than 10 years ago. Developed on multiple legacy technologies with an integration framework that communicated with a back-end enterprise application, these legacy platforms all operated within traditional on-premise data centers. Though it worked, it was slow, which resulted in difficult releases and limited innovation.
Over time, the legacy technologies became increasingly complex and required specialized product knowledge that had become scarce. The development of features was time-consuming, making it difficult to pivot into modern solutions within a rapidly aging environment. 

The once revolutionary solution was now causing issues that directly impacted profitability, leaving much to be desired for customers and employees alike.

Inefficient Processes

Due to the outdated system, innovative solutions could only go as far as the system would allow. Being over ten years old, the system limited innovation. It got to the point where more time was spent on supporting and maintaining the platform than actually utilizing the technology. This impacted every part of the company. Onboarding new clients became difficult, which decreased revenue—all because of an aged technology.

Migrated Legacy Systems to AWS

CleanSlate migrated all on-premise workloads to AWS. Then, modernized the entire platform with DevOps, Cloud Architecture, Cloud-Native Development, and SaaS-focused solutions. By transferring those workloads to AWS, those applications became more efficient to drive innovation and deliver quicker results.

Building on a Cloud-Based Architecture

Working closely with the client’s internal architects, the decision was made to re-platform the application based on a serverless architecture hosted in AWS. After the architecture was determined, CleanSlate completed a design based entirely on AWS services. The enabling technology for this implementation provided solutions to a significant number of challenges:

• Unlike the previous Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based design, the new API needed to be entirely public-facing to be accessible from the new Single-Page Application running on end-users’ browsers.  AWS API Gateway provided the services that allowed the API to be public-facing yet still secured.
• This new public API needed to be fully secured using 2 different authentication mechanisms: OAuth tokens (for end-users) or API keys (for trusted systems).  The API gateway made it possible to easily create separate endpoints for these authentication methods that invoked separate Lambda custom  authorizers while still leveraging the same target Lambda function.
• API throttling was required for API-key based calls, which was built using custom authorizers that supported API keys.

Developed a SaaS Solution

CleanSlate cloud experts were engaged to work with the client to design and implement a new solution for the customer-facing site. 

Autoscaling was a requirement to ensure the application would scale to satisfy user demand. This capability is provided by API Gateway and Lambda services “out of the box.”  Also, by taking advantage of Lambda concurrency provisioning, concerns over resource “cold starts” were eliminated.

• Used SaaS decomposition strategy to shape the solution design. The AWS microservice architecture provides a resilient and scalable infrastructure that grows as applications are integrated and customer transaction volume increases. 
• Resolved privacy and international compliance controls by conforming to GDPR standards
• During customer onboarding, our team properly maintained and synchronized customer identities while also ensuring the identities were secured within the Enterprise Identity Management platform. 
• Successful delivery of the solution allowed the client to meet their goal of a unified customer profile for all business applications that maintained compliance controls and privacy, which accelerated scalability for long-term success.

CleanSlate completed the construction of the first release of the application in just 12 weeks. The successful implementation led to an expanded rollout plan that included additional features and capabilities.

The Results

Following are many of the benefits realized by the client:  

• Migration of the application has eliminated the barrier to retire the IBM legacy platforms
• The completely modern application meets the needs of the customer
• The new security framework is reusable and is being consumed by other product teams
• A notable performance improvement has been realized throughout the application
•  An accelerated ability exists to release features due to the microservice architecture
• The well defined and simplified technology footprint allows for improved supportability
•  Operational improvements have been realized including scalability, reliability, reduction in infrastructure (70%)
•  The serverless architecture is a fraction of the cost of the previous legacy platform (approximately $1000/month)
• Deployment frequency has been improved from quarterly to bi-weekly