Our client is a 160+-year-old portfolio medical technology business focused on repairing, regenerating, and replacing soft and hard tissue.
The Challenge
The client had an extensive AWS landscape with Persistent as the infrastructure management team. We were responsible for provisioning and managing the client’s AWS environment, such as creating virtual private clouds, using Terraform for infrastructure as code, and building compliance with applicable laws and regulations, primarily HIPAA.
A third-party vendor developed the client’s applications and, due to poor cloud hygiene, there were issues with lapsed licenses, security, and cost overheads. The client also lacked operational resilience, with poor performance, security, and disaster recovery mechanisms.
The client commissioned Persistent to align with the AWS well-architected framework, which would help it streamline operations in the cloud and build secure, cost-effective, and high-performing application.
The Solution
Persistent holds a competency for the AWS well-architected framework, and being embedded in the client’s AWS infrastructure, we were uniquely positioned to deliver quick value to the client. We prioritized three of the program’s 12 pillars: Cost optimization, security, and operational excellence. We started by setting up workshops with the client’s development team and AWS to understand the requirements and tasks under each pillar to meet the required benchmarks.
We worked on the security pillar first. We set up guidelines for disaster recovery and rearchitected the AWS environment to comply with AWS Security Hub rules. We created utilities to automate identifying and remediating non-compliant rules and resources to ensure a consistent, high-scoring security posture. We enforced restrictive permissions for external entities to cloud-hosted resources or files to ensure authorized access. To further pre-empt a security breach, we actively monitored older credentials and access policies of AWS resources, and we also embedded automated mechanisms to ensure data remains protected in transit and at rest.
For the operational excellence pillar, we built monitoring and reporting mechanisms that give a unified view of the health of the client’s AWS environment. These mechanisms help the client monitor utilization and right-size the deployed resources according to usage needs, helping it deliver high-performing, reliable, and available applications.
We also automated the rightsizing and scaling of the AWS infrastructure to reduce operational costs and waste resources.
The Outcome
With the well-architected framework, the client can now:
- Optimize $150,000 in cloud costs.
- Ensure consistently robust security posture with a high AWS Security Hub score.
- Ensure 100% application availability with operational excellence.
