How a Major Investment Firm Migrated 55 Apps and Data to the AWS Cloud

The urgency of technological transformation has gripped nearly every type of business in recent years, but none more than the financial services sector. Banks, investment firms, insurance companies and other institutions increasingly depend on fast and powerful internal systems to retrieve and process data, as well as consumer-facing innovations to bring convenience and security to their account holders. Financial services firms that fall behind technologically put themselves at risk of being overtaken by more aggressive competitors, including nimble digital natives disrupting the financial space.

Understanding the stakes, a major U.S.-based investment company sought help in modernizing its expansive applications portfolio and data platforms by migrating them to the cloud. NTT DATA and Amazon Web Services (AWS) answered the call. [Read the full case study here.] 

A case made for cloud

Like many of its competitors, the client knew it needed a technology upgrade in order to protect its market position and keep customers happy. Three key priorities topped the list. First, the company needed to ensure they could easily scale applications to deal with fluctuating demands and accommodate growth more effectively. Second, they wanted to increase speed to market for new capabilities, hoping to outpace the competition in delighting their customers with friction-free digital services. From a financial perspective, they were eager to reduce their data center footprint and cut operational costs.

The client’s goals aligned perfectly with the well-established business case for cloud and data migration. By modernizing and moving critical applications and data to the AWS cloud, the company could free itself from slow, outdated legacy systems, scale up or down as needed, and take advantage of a variable, usage-based cost structure.

A three-way collaboration

Drawing on its deep experience with cloud and data migrations and a pre-existing relationship with the client, NTT DATA quickly assembled a cross-functional team of stakeholders including IT, core business units, customer experience, and data analytics. Step one was to conduct an in-depth portfolio analysis of the client’s 180 applications. Of those, the team determined that 55 front-office apps would be migrated to AWS, with 12 of those ideally suited for AWS-based microservices modernization. A microservices architecture uses containers to break up a massive, monolithic application into a variety of independent services, making each function scalable and adaptable in its own right.

To streamline the migration process, NTT DATA took advantage of the AWS Cloud Migration Factory, which is used to coordinate and automate many of the manual tasks involved in large-scale migrations. In conjunction with the Migration Factory, NTT DATA’s Build Cloud Foundations service provided a secure, scalable, and unified AWS landing zone for the client’s 55 applications. Build Cloud Foundations integrates with other AWS services to enhance security visibility, automate account provisioning, and spare the client from integrating Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Furthermore, NTT DATA’s Deploy Containers solution for AWS helped the team automate deployment and configuration of the applications in a repeatable process.

In simple terms, NTT DATA was able to use its customized tool set (designed to work seamlessly with an array of AWS services) to migrate the client’s applications quickly and securely, putting the company’s digital transformation on the fast track.

Mission accomplished

With the smooth migration to AWS, the client was able to exit its data centers in less time, reducing its data center costs and mainframe MIPS consumption by a third. More importantly, with 70% of its application delivery management pipelines automated, the move to the cloud enabled the company to bring new and exciting digital capabilities to its customers – ahead of competitors. Unburdened of technical debt and posting a 19% year-over-year efficiency improvement, the client is now well positioned to meet customers’ evolving needs in the future.

Repeatable results

Companies in any industry can gain some assurance knowing that this client’s story is not unique. Many large, long-established enterprises with deeply entrenched legacy applications are under pressure to modernize or slowly fade into obsolescence. A move to the cloud is all but mandatory to attain the speed and flexibility today’s marketplace demands, but making such changes is usually easier said than done. With NTT DATA’s expertise and collaboration with AWS, clients can approach even the most daunting migration projects with confidence, opening the door to long-term business prosperity and resilience.