Cloud Native Development | Applied AI Consulting

A Leading Insurance MNC Saves Costs with Infrastructure-as-Code Facilitated by AWS CloudFormation

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 18:01:56 +0000

A Leading Insurance MNC Saves Costs with Infrastructure-as-Code Facilitated by AWS CloudFormation

Reduced app deployment time from weeks to hours, achieved significant cost savings, and enhanced infrastructure flexibility and scalability using AWS CloudFormation and containerization.

Company Overview

A leading company in the insurance sector, this organization provides a comprehensive range of life insurance products, including individual and group insurance plans. With a strong focus on customer-centric solutions, the company offers protection, savings, pension, investment, health, and annuity products. Known for its innovative approach and commitment to quality, the company serves millions of customers, ensuring their financial security and peace of mind.

Issue

The customer was manually deploying apps, taking 5 to 6 weeks, slowing down the software development lifecycle (SDL).

Increasing costs due to lack of containerization, leading to inefficiencies in transitioning app environments from testing to development to production.

Manual IT infrastructure management was exhausting and time-consuming, leading to increased technical debt and slower development cycles.

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Option Evaluation and Decision: Presented the client with two infrastructure provisioning and deployment options: Terraform and Helm or AWS CloudFormation. The client selected AWS CloudFormation due to team familiarity and future flexibility for modifications.

Containerization and DevOps Pipeline Implementation: Implemented containerization for a portable computing environment with VMs, and developed a DevOps pipeline to automate testing, integration, and deployment. This shortened the software development lifecycle (SDL) and enhanced collaboration between development and operations teams.

Legacy IT Infrastructure Modernization: Codified and managed the client’s legacy IT infrastructure using AWS CloudFormation, providing a robust Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solution.

Impact

Email Optimization

Accelerated Deployment: Reduced application deployment time from 5-6 weeks to just a few hours.

Productivity Boost

Cost Savings and Efficiency: Achieved significant cost savings through containerization and automated infrastructure management, and improved SDL efficiency with a robust DevOps pipeline, leading to faster, high-quality app releases.

Scalable Infrastructure

Enhanced Infrastructure Management: Improved flexibility and scalability of IT infrastructure with AWS CloudFormation.

Customer Testimonials

Thanks to Applied AI Consulting, our IT infrastructure is now more flexible and scalable, supporting our growth and innovation goals. Their deep knowledge of AWS CloudFormation and Infrastructure-as-Code has truly elevated our operational capabilities.
Head of Engineering Leading Insurance MNC

Accelerating Integration with a Robust API Platform: How a Leading Automation Provider Transformed Their Processes Using AWS Services

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:28:07 +0000

Accelerating Integration with a Robust API Platform: How a Leading Automation Provider Transformed Their Processes Using AWS Services

Streamlining Operations: Leveraging AWS to Enhance Automation Through a Powerful API Platform

Company Overview

A leading company in the automation platform domain, this organization provides innovative solutions for enterprise automation, including digital transformation, process improvement, and growth strategies. Their platform addresses complex challenges such as information access, approval processes, high transaction volumes, and compliance issues. The company’s integrated payment solutions and process automation tools are revolutionizing enterprises by making operations more efficient and streamlined.

Issue

Time-Consuming Integrations: Building and maintaining point-to-point integrations for each client was resource-intensive and inefficient.

Lengthy Integration Process: Integrating with third-party ERPs and payment systems took 8-12 weeks per client, delaying project timelines.

Limited Scalability: The existing process constrained the ability to serve multiple clients simultaneously, limiting growth.

Need for a Scalable Solution: A scalable, reusable integration framework was required to streamline and accelerate the onboarding process for new clients.

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

API-Based Integration Gateway: Implemented a robust API-based Integration Gateway using AWS services like Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, and others to streamline integrations.

Custom Solution Architecture: Designed a four-component architecture (Flow, Filter, Transformer, Adopter) to efficiently manage and transform inputs for various ERP systems, enhancing compatibility and flexibility.

Automated CI/CD Pipelines: Established automated CI/CD pipelines to ensure continuous integration and deployment, minimizing manual intervention and enhancing system reliability.

Impact

Accelerated Time-to-Market & Customer Onboarding

Significantly improved the accuracy and efficiency of email content classification and follow-ups. Reduced integration and deployment times by 80%, enabling faster rollout of new features and rapid onboarding of new clients in under a week.

Operational Efficiency & Cost Savings

Automated over 30 tasks and implemented a reusable integration framework, leading to a 60% increase in efficiency and a 40% reduction in operational costs.

Scalability & Enhanced User Experience

Scalable architecture supported increased workloads and customer demands, while a simplified, user-friendly interface improved client satisfaction and expanded customer capacity by 80%.

Customer Testimonials

The API platform developed by Applied AI Consulting has been a game-changer for us. It has significantly reduced manual efforts and errors, enabling us to onboard 80% more customers with ease. Their work has truly elevated our capabilities.
CTO 7Targets.ai

Building a Secure and Scalable Enterprise Document Search Platform for a Major Federal IT Services Provider

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 15:49:08 +0000

Building a Secure and Scalable Enterprise Document Search Platform for a Major Federal IT Services Provider

Leveraging Advanced Technologies to Enhance Document Retrieval, Security, and Scalability in Complex IT Environments

improved customer engagement and response rates

Company Overview

A major company in the IT consulting and services domain, this organization specializes in delivering premium solutions to USA federal agencies and enterprises. Known for their expertise in security, scalability, and availability, the company provides cutting-edge technology solutions that cater to the complex needs of their clients. Their services include consulting, managed services, and custom IT solutions.

Issue

Addressing the demand for a secure and scalable document search platform capable of supporting one of the largest US federal agencies.

Ensuring the platform’s ability to efficiently manage and search through petabytes of documents with both speed and accuracy.

Implementing robust Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to uphold stringent security standards.

Integrating advanced AI techniques to enable contextual and generative search functionalities.

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Collaborated with the customer to design and build a secure, scalable enterprise document search platform using the Azure ecosystem, incorporating proprietary technology for efficient document crawling and embedding.

Implemented Mistral managed service for robust management of AI models and data, and developed a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) approach to enhance the search experience with generative AI.

Ensured the platform’s compliance with the stringent security, scalability, and availability requirements of a federal agency

Impact

Platform Development

Successfully created a secure and scalable document search platform tailored for a federal agency, capable of managing large-scale data.

High-Speed Search

Enabled the efficient processing and retrieval of petabytes of documents, ensuring rapid and accurate search capabilities.

Security & AI

Integrated RBAC and generative AI for enhanced security and user experience.

Customer Testimonials

The enterprise document search platform has revolutionized our operations, delivering exceptional security, scalability, and speed. Its advanced AI and robust access control have significantly improved our efficiency and document management.
VP of Engineering

Driving Quality and Reliability for Modern Mobile and Web Applications

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:26:41 +0000

Driving Quality and Reliability for Modern Mobile and Web Applications

Building a Modern Mobile and Web Application with Robust CI/CD Automation and AI-Powered Multi-Device Testing

Company Overview

A leading start-up in the online consulting platform domain, this company focuses on connecting end-users with top industry professionals for expert consultation services. Known for its innovative approach and cutting-edge technology, the company aims to provide seamless and efficient solutions for both consultants and clients, ensuring high-quality interactions and problem-solving experiences. Applied AI Consulting has created the modern stack with payment gateway integration for this customer. This case study is focused on quality engineering.

Issue

Cross-Platform Compatibility: Building a modern application that supports both mobile and web platforms can introduce challenges in ensuring consistent functionality and user experience.

Testing Coverage: Ensuring thorough and reliable UI and API testing to cover all possible use cases and scenarios, which is crucial for maintaining application quality and reliability.

Automation Integration: Integrating automation testing into the CI/CD pipeline effectively, ensuring that automated tests run seamlessly with each deployment to catch issues early.

Performance and Reliability: Maintaining high performance and reliability of the application across multiple platforms and under varying load conditions.

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Developed and Integrated Automation Frameworks: Created a Selenium-Python-based framework for UI testing and a pyTest framework for API testing, integrating them with the CI/CD pipeline.

Executed Cross-Platform Testing: Utilized aiTest for automation across multiple devices, browsers, and versions, including API quality validation with Postman collections.

Enhanced Communication and Visibility: Provided test execution updates and analytics through Slack and email, and demonstrated automation results in end-of-iteration demos.

Impact

Enhanced Quality and User Experience

Achieved very high application quality with minimal defects and ensured a seamless user experience across devices and browsers.

Accelerated Release Cycles

Reduced testing time by 40% through CI/CD integration and automation, leading to faster feature releases and updates.

Cost Savings and Performance Improvement

Decreased testing-related costs by 30% and improved application performance, contributing to higher user retention and scalable growth.

Customer Testimonials

Applied AI Consulting has been instrumental in driving the quality and reliability of our mobile and web applications. Their expertise in building a modern stack with seamless payment gateway integration has allowed us to provide our users with a smooth and efficient experience. The team's commitment to excellence and their innovative approach have significantly enhanced our platform's performance, ensuring we meet the high standards our clients expect.
Founder Click to Connect

Reduced Operational Cost by 70%: Migrating from Rundeck to AWS Batch for a Leading Content Marketing Platform

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:01:07 +0000

Reduced Operational Cost by 70%: Migrating from Rundeck to AWS Batch for a Leading Content Marketing Platform

Transforming Cost Efficiency: How Migrating to AWS Batch Slashed Operational Costs by 70% for a Content Marketing Leader

Company Overview

A leading company in the content marketing domain, this organization helps brands and their customers connect through high quality, relevant content. The platform enables companies to produce and disseminate their own content, improving customer acquisition, building brand loyalty, and sustaining interest in their offerings. The company also owns a marketing analytics software that helps marketers compute ROI and improve outcomes across integrated digital and social channels.

Issue

High Operational Costs: Elevated costs associated with using Rundeck for batch processing.

Need for Scalability: Requirement for a more scalable and efficient solution to manage growing workloads.

Migration Disruption: Ensuring minimal disruption during the transition from Rundeck to the new solution.

Performance Enhancement: Improving the overall performance and reliability of batch processing operations.

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Migration to AWS Batch Movedbatch processing operations from Rundeck to AWS Batch, leveraging AWS’s scalable infrastructure for enhanced performance and efficiency.**

Automation & Orchestration **Implemented AWS Lambda for job management and AWS Step Functions for orchestrating complex workflows and managing job dependencies.

Monitoring & Transition Utilized AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and alerting, ensuring smooth operations and a seamless transition with minimal downtime through meticulous planning.

Impact

Cost Savings & Efficiency

Migrating to AWS Batch reduced operational costs by 70%and automated batch processing, cutting job execution time by40%

Scalability & Reliability

Leveraged AWS Batch’s scalable architecture to efficiently handle increased workloads, supporting effective business growth

Resource Optimization

Reduced manual intervention and improved operational efficiency, enabling better allocation of resources to strategic initiatives.

A USA-Based Fintech Startup Achieved Faster Releases and Scalability Through AAIC’s DevOps Pipeline and Infrastructure-as-Code

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:45:56 +0000

A USA-Based Fintech Startup Achieved Faster Releases and Scalability Through AAIC’s DevOps Pipeline and Infrastructure-as-Code

Boost Speed and Scale with AAIC’s DevOps and IaC

Company Overview

A leading company in the fintech sector, this organization specializes in providing innovative financial technology solutions to streamline and enhance payment processing for businesses. Known for its cutting-edge approach and customer-centric services, the company offers a wide range of products, including digital wallets, payment gateways, and financial analytics tools. The company is committed to delivering high-performance, secure, and scalable solutions to its diverse clientele.

Issue

Slow and manual deployment processes, causing delays in software releases and increasing time-to-market.

Difficulty in managing infrastructure efficiently, leading to high operational costs and resource allocation issues.

The need for a scalable solution to handle increasing transaction volumes and user demands.

Ensuring security and compliance with industry standards for financial transactions.

Let’s discuss your use cases

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Automated Deployment & Reliable Releases: Designed and implemented a DevOps pipeline, utilizing CI/CD for faster, more reliable releases, and efficient maintenance.

Infrastructure & Scalability: Used Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) with AWS CloudFormation for efficient infrastructure management, and implemented containerization with Docker and Kubernetes for scalability and application portability.

Security Enhancements: Strengthened security with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and encryption for data at rest and in transit.

Impact

Faster Deployment & Cost Efficiency

Accelerated deployment cycles from weeks to hours and significantly reduced operational costs through efficient infrastructure management and automation.

Scalability & Performance

Achieved high scalability to seamlessly handle increased transaction volumes.

Security & Compliance

Enhanced security and compliance with industry standards to protect sensitive financial data.

Facilitating DevOps and Infrastructure Modernization for Zykrr: A Seamless Transition from Azure to AWS

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:16:35 +0000

Facilitating DevOps and Infrastructure Modernization for Zykrr: A Seamless Transition from Azure to AWS

Seamless Azure to AWS Transition Enhancing DevOps and Infrastructure Modernization

Company Overview

Zykrr is a leading platform that provides real-time visibility, insights, and control over customer interactions across various channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, QR codes, email, kiosks, websites, and in-app communications. Their AI/ML-enabled platform delivers actionable insights and real-time visibility, enhancing customer and employee interactions. With a focus on automating critical customer experience management functions, Zykrr aims to deliver exceptional customer experiences and predict future actions based on sentiment analysis.

Issue

Migration & Modernization: Recreating the existing Azure setup on AWS while maintaining functionality and architecture.

Infrastructure Setup: Building and deploying a new application infrastructure on AWS, adhering to specified requirements and timelines.

Maintenance & Support: Reducing the efforts associated with deploying, maintaining, and supporting applications by leveraging AWS services.

Optimized Infrastructure: Achieving a robust, scalable, and secure AWS infrastructure.

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Similar Use Cases

What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Infrastructure Setup: Built Zykrr’s AWS infrastructure using S3 for scalable storage, EKS for managed Kubernetes, and RDS for PostgreSQL.

Application Deployment: Deployed React front-end on AWS CloudFront and S3, back-end microservices on EKS with Helm charts, and configured PostgreSQL and Redis on RDS and Elasticache.

Security & Performance: Secured infrastructure with network measures, API Gateway, and Application Load Balancer; ensured high availability and fault tolerance through multi-AZ deployments and CDN acceleration.

Impact

Successful Migration

Achieved a seamless migration from Azure to AWS with all functionalities intact.

Enhanced Deployment Efficiency

Streamlined deployment processes with AWS services, reducing operational overhead.

Enhanced Scalability, Reliability, & Cost Efficiency

Leveraged AWS’s scalability features for effective peak load management and high availability while implementing resource optimization strategies to achieve cost savings and efficient resource management.

Customer Testimonials

Applied AI Consulting’s expertise in building custom AI solutions with ML and NLP, along with their scalable AWS implementation, significantly enhanced our product’s performance. Their innovative approach and commitment to quality have driven tangible improvements, greatly benefiting our customers.
CTO 7Targets.ai

Capital Market Platform Journey to Enhanced Scalability and Efficiency

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 15:27:41 +0000

Transforming Financial Services with AWS: Capital Market Platform Journey to Enhanced Scalability and Efficiency

Seamlessly Modernizing and Scaling a Capital Market Platform on AWS with Enhanced Monitoring and Collaboration

Company Overview

A leading financial services company focused on global emerging markets, this organization delivers up-to-date market insights from major financial centers to local investors. Known for its intelligence-driven approach, the company provides valuable information to help investors navigate diverse market conditions effectively. The company is committed to leveraging advanced technologies to enhance its services and maintain a competitive edge in the financial sector.

Issue

Migrating and modernizing the content management application to AWS.

Implementing AWS cloud operations and DevOps for continuous integrations and deployments.

Enhancing scalability and reliability of the applications.

Setting up efficient monitoring and operations dashboards.

Let’s discuss your use cases

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What Is an AI Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a framework used to assess how well your organization uses a

AAIC + Nisum Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation with Agentic AI and AWS Innovation

Applied AI Consulting is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Nisum, aimed at delivering

Solution

Containerized and Scalable Deployment: Containerized the EMFI application using AWS ECS Fargate and set up an ALB for traffic distribution and auto-scaling.

Automated CI/CD and Infrastructure Management: Implemented CI/CD pipelines, automated environment deployments with ASG, and managed AWS services using Terraform.

Enhanced Monitoring and Migration: Established a Datadog dashboard for monitoring and facilitated migration from private GitLab to public GitHub.

Impact

Cloud Migration and Modernization

Successfully migrated the content management application to AWS, modernizing its infrastructure.

Scalability and Reliability

Achieved high scalability and reliability through containerization and automated deployments.

Improved Monitoring and Collaboration

Enhanced system visibility with Datadog and streamlined version control by migrating to GitHub.

Customer Testimonials

Applied AI Consulting’s expertise in building custom AI solutions with ML and NLP, along with their scalable AWS implementation, significantly enhanced our product’s performance. Their innovative approach and commitment to quality have driven tangible improvements, greatly benefiting our customers.
CTO 7Targets.ai

Ten Most Common Cloud Migration Challenges (and how to resolve them)

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 06:50:00 +0000

There is no doubt that cloud computing is one of the biggest technological disruptions in modern times, and it is only going to grow. With an estimated CAGR of 18%, it looks set to hit USD 623 billion by 2023. But despite these high growth forecasts, there are many businesses that have yet to embrace the cloud. The biggest factor in their hesitation is uncertainty about cloud costs and data security, among others. There are ten fundamental challenges that businesses must face in their cloud migration, and this article takes a closer look at each, and what can be done to overcome them.

1. Manage resistance to cloud adoption

The first, and arguably biggest challenge, is one that is as old as humankind itself: resistance to change. The bigger the disruption to the established way of doing things, the stronger the resistance. And cloud migration brings a significant level of disruption, with new systems, processes, and technology to be mastered. Ignoring the human aspects of cloud migration can subvert the best-planned migration strategies.

What can you do?

Prepare a change management plan and secure buy-in from key stakeholders. Obtaining support across the board, from C-suite management to department leaders can help mitigate a lot of the stress. Ensure also that everyone, from leadership downwards, understands the objectives and benefits of moving to the cloud. So communication is key. Finally, prioritize integration and usability. Employees are easier to get on board when they use and understand the benefits of the applications.

2. Clear uncertainty regarding cloud migration costs

Done correctly, cloud migration is sure to reduce costs significantly, while improving productivity and streamlining workflows. But it is not an overnight process. There are factors such as compatibility, new skills, data recovery, and, above all, the migration strategy that can add to your costs.

What can you do?

Preparation is the best way to avoid unnecessary migration costs. Work out the expenses in collaboration with your cloud service provider, before committing to a migration plan.

Include costs such as platform & infrastructure costs, migration costs, cost of delays (slow adoption), cost of training post-migration, and hiring new resources. If you need a hand, reach out to AAIC. Our cloud migration consultants will be happy to help you predict possible costs and work out ways to lower your cloud TCO.

3. Bridge the skills gap

Do you hire new talent or up-skill existing resources? This is a million-dollar question, but a necessary one to ask and understand. Because people worry that they might lose their jobs to migration. And this is a valid worry. Cloud migration needs different skills from those that are needed to run a legacy system.

What can you do?

The best way to deal with this issue is to do both: hire new talent to help with the migration and enhance your existing team’s skills. You need your in-house engineers, who know your applications and how they run. Up-skilling can help take a lot of the pressure off the rest of the team. You also need an external Cloud Migration Consultant, who will bring the necessary knowledge and skills to streamline the migration. Above all, everyone must understand the need for a collaborative approach. You can speed up the process by creating awareness about the skills and education needed. Set up digital boards with helpful information about certifications, et al, and reward individuals who earn needed certifications.

4. Application ecosystem & discovery tools

No application works discretely, each is part of an ecosystem, and you need to trace linkages to understand what connects with what in order to migrate the applications painlessly. This means you need discovery tools. Discovery tools like Cloudamize and other agent-based or agentless tools can connect data, estimate cloud servers, create architecture diagrams and reveal active executables.

What can you do?

Working without these tools means relying on expensive and slower manual processes to analyze business-critical applications, their structure, and dependencies. Finally, understand that you won’t be able to have each and every one of your features documented. In truth, this is one of the reasons for your migration—to review your application ecosystem and improve functionality.

5. Plan

Cloud adoption can be complicated. Moving your business infrastructure and assets calls for detailed planning. All too often businesses jump on the cloud bandwagon without taking the time and effort to plan how they adoption will take place. For instance, app modernization or refactoring vs lift and shift approach. All work, but each one suits a specific type of workload/application. While the lift-and-shift approach may be the fastest, it may not be the ideal one.

What can you do?

Start by brainstorming and putting together a detailed strategy for your cloud migration. This means you must analyze your business objectives and current assets, so you can pick the best-fit strategy. A good strategy should take you through the migration smoothly—no analysis paralysis!

Start by factoring in the applications that need to move, prepare a priority list, and calculate the cost of data processing, data movement, and cost of downtime during the transition. Be prepared to rebuild systems that might need it, once the migration is done. Finally, map milestones and plan steps to streamline the transition.

6. Managing Your Cloud Infrastructure

When you migrate to AWS you get access to a range of services and tools designed to make management of your infrastructure and data simpler. This is true in theory. In practice it can be a daunting task, especially in light of the AWS’s approach of continuous innovation, which releases new services and tools all-too-frequently.

What you can do?

Working with a top AWS Managed Services provider gives you access to the latest tools and processes from AWS, which are available exclusively to members of the Amazon Partner Network (APN). This gives you a range of advantages where management of your cloud is concerned.

At Applied AI Consulting, for instance, our architects and cloud engineers bring a high level os skills to manage, automate, and monitor your cloud workloads. This includes:

Change Management: helping you incorporate changes smoothly; this includes automation
Incident Management: Continuous monitoring of your cloud infrastructure
Patch Management: application of patches without disrupting your business
Access Management: Through Amazon Identity & Access Management (IAM)
Security Management: Securing your data and applications
Continuity Management: Backup for seamless restoration, in the event of failure
Continuous Improvement: Through monthly reports and recommendations we help you generate the maximum value from your AWS cloud.

7. Data Security and Compliance

Concerns about data security and compliance risks can pose serious challenges to your cloud migration. It’s natural to worry about handing your confidential data to third party security vendors—even in deeply secured cloud environments. Data breaches that occur during migration can lead to severe service disruptions.

What can you do?

Be aware that cloud platforms are built to be secure; their security systems are industry grade. Data, during migration, is encrypted and secured behind firewalls. This virtually eliminates the risk of data theft. For your peace of mind, though, you can query your cloud vendor, as follows:

What’s the data migration process?

Where is the data going to be stored?

Will the data be secured by end-to-end encryption?

Which security standards are the platform compliant with?

8. Prepare for DevOps transformations

This is a typical scenario: You want to implement a DevOps transformation on top of your cloud migration. This is a big disruption with lots of room for failure. The biggest of these is the culture, viz, DevOps Culture.

What can you do?

If you don’t create and encourage a DevOps culture within your organization, you will find it an uphill task to maximize cloud benefits. What is most likely to happen is that you will create an environment similar to your on-premises one, which means you will not realize all the benefits of cloud migration.

9. Adopt cloud-native architecture

There is no point in migrating to the cloud if you insist on using your clunky legacy applications. Going cloud-native means developing lightweight, disposable applications that easily scale out and are easy to monitor. Start by establishing a DevOps culture and using practices like container adoption, microservices, and serverless computing to build and deploy applications that allow for quick release and better scalability.

What can you do?

Gain an in-depth understanding of the twelve-factor principles and use them to set a baseline for adopting and building cloud-native applications. The twelve-factor approach describes a set of twelve best practices, originally drafted by Heroku in 2011, to develop applications deployed as services on cloud platforms.

10. Prepare for working in a hybrid setup

Chances are you will be working with hybrid networking; in which case, you must factor in security and networking right at the beginning. Hybrid configurations require security, which may not be required after the migration is successfully completed.

What can you do?

Define your minimum viable cloud— automation-, operations-, and security-frameworks, networking architecture, and core account structure. Implement identity and access management and define access patterns and plan how you will deal with related threat vectors. You may also need to boost security measures if you have a higher volume of personally identifiable information (PII) to secure. Plan how you will prevent data loss, patch vulnerabilities, etc.

In Conclusion

Cloud migrations can be challenging, but dealing with the challenges is easier when you’re prepared for them. Applied AI Consulting (AAIC) offers step-by-step guidance to help businesses unlock the full transformative power of the cloud. Interested in migrating to the cloud? Talk to AAIC’s Cloud Solutions Architects today to clarify any queries you may have about the cloud process.

Making the Decision: EC2 vs. Lambda for Your Cloud Computing Needs

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 13:06:04 +0000

Servers have always been the backbone of all computing environments, be it on-prem or in the cloud. But servers need to be monitored and managed, updates need to be made regularly, the data needs to be stored properly, backed up, made accessible to the right people, and above all, secured. The coming of Serverless Computing took away all these responsibilities, saving on capital expenditures, and leaving organizations free to focus on their core business more freely.

Of course, the term ‘Serverless doesn’t mean there is no server; just that the server has been abstracted away by the cloud service provider, who assumes responsibility for its management and security. AWS, which changed the face of computing by pioneering cloud computing, has also given the most popular cloud server-led compute service forms, EC2, as well as, Lambda, a serverless compute service that you can use to host highly available and scalable applications. So which one is better? To find out, this article maps the differences between EC2 and Lambda Serverless. Remember though that Lambda is not AWS’s only serverless service, there are several others as we shall see. But they all promise the same benefits as Lambda.

EC2 vs Amazon Lambda

Infrastructure

The biggest advantage serverless computing offers is that you don’t have to provision or manage servers. This is done entirely by the CSP. So you don’t have any provisioning, and management headaches, patching, updates, etc. are all taken care of by the Cloud Platform. With EC2 instances, you control the underlying infrastructure. Thus, you need to take care of scalability, Amazon Machine Image (AMI—templatized configuration, i.e. containing application with OS, App server, etc.), rehydration (spinning up new servers, complete with the latest patches already installed, destroying old servers, etc)

This also means enormous savings in terms of capital expenses, which are converted into operating expenditures, as we will see.

Scalability is an implicit benefit of cloud computing, but with serverless computing, this happens automatically, unlike with EC2. As traffic to your application increases, the platform automatically spins up more Lambda instances to accommodate the traffic. With EC2 this doesn’t happen automatically. Users need to set up load balancers, auto-scaling groups, set up auto-scaling policies, etc., themselves.

Pay for what you use

Pay-per-use is another implicit benefit of cloud computing, but the benefits are significantly enhanced with serverless. As long your function doesn’t run, you pay nothing. With EC2 you still have to pay for your instances, whether they remain idle or not.

Availability

As you don’t need to manage any server, Lambda functions are highly available and scalable. Serverless functions are automatically deployed in multiple availability zones (AZ). You don’t have to do anything. This means that even if one of the AZs goes down, your Lambda will still be up and running. However, with EC2, the onus is on you to deploy it in different AZs, create load balancers—the whole kit and caboodle.

Lambda is not the only AWS serverless service. AWS offers Amazon DynamoDB, Fargate, AWS API Gateway, and Amazon SQS (simple queue service), among others. What this means is that all these services offer the benefits of serverless listed above.

Software

You can’t install software, for instance, web servers, or app servers, in the underlying environment; however, you can install whatever code libraries you need for your Lambda code to run. These can simply be zipped up and deployed. With EC2, since you control the underlying environment, you can install almost any software—there are several pre-packaged AMIs for a variety of different software available. Amazon EC2 supports a variety of different operating systems; with serverless services, AWS Lambda natively supports Java, Go, PowerShell, Node. js, C#, Python, and Ruby code, and provides a Runtime API, which allows you to use any additional programming languages to author your functions.

Compute

Lambda allows you to select compute power at any point. You simply shift the slider bar for memory and timeout. Memory can be ramped up from 128 MB to 3 GB, and timeout from a single second to 15 minutes. As you increase memory to your Lambda, the platform automatically allocates more CPU as well. This happens instantaneously, even while the Lambda is running. With EC2 instances, you can choose the size and type of VM instance. What you’re doing, in effect, is changing the EC2 instance itself, so there is a brief interruption.

Storage

Lambda doesn’t have any attached hard disk, so the deployment package size is limited. EC2 instances allow you to attach multiple hard disks or Elastic Block Storage (EBS). So you’re not limited by package size. You can pretty much deploy any size of package you require.

Cost

Factors like the cost of installing and maintaining hardware, IT staff, etc. make it more expensive to use an EC2. This is avoided with Lambda. Since you only pay for usage, this brings down costs considerably. Plus you avoid paying for hardware, IT staff, etc, however, what you gain in the elimination of management, you lose in control of your infrastructure.

Major Benefits at a Glance

Lambda (Serverless)

EC2

No need to manage server

complete control of your environment

highly scalable

Scalability & availability instances need to be provisioned and configured by users

highly available

Availability depends on architecture

no attached storage

Can deploy as much as needed

Cheaper when traffic is unpredictable

Steady, heavy traffic volumes suit EC2 adoption

Use Cases

1. Integration

Lambda is excellent for event-driven functions. It offers native integration with other services, like S3, and Kinesis. This means you can trigger lambda to run the object in the S3 bucket directly. With EC2, as we saw, since you control the underlying environment, you can run just about anything. Suppose you need to run a web server or app server with third-party software. You can install all of this in your EC2

2. Traffic (un)predictability

Lambda shines in use cases where traffic cannot be predicted. As it is inherently scalable and automatically highly available, you don’t have to configure anything. Furthermore, since you only pay for when the function actually runs, you avoid paying for any idle time

ECS works best when traffic can be predicted. Because you’re paying for all the underlying infrastructure, it doesn’t matter if it is idle or running. Furthermore, you pay for the entire VM, not just the part being used. Let’s say you’ve set up Elastic Load Balancer, Autoscaling Group with your EC2 running inside. As traffic increases, it spins up another EC2 instance to accommodate the increased traffic, but let’s say only 50% of the new EC2 is being used. You still pay for the entire VM. Clearly, the best use-case scenario for EC2 is when traffic is steady and can be predicted

3. Microservices adoption

Both EC2 and Lambda are well suited for microservices, but for different reasons. Lambda has API Gateway integration and, because the code is modular without dependencies on software, it is generally easier to migrate cloud-native greenfield applications. However, brownfield monolithic applications will need major refactoring. EC2 is also a good candidate for microservices, as you can easily move APIs with dependencies, although you do have to consider the cost and complexity of building and running a greenfield application on EC2.

Takeaway

There is no clear winner in the EC2 vs Lambda debate. As we have seen it all depends on your requirements, the need to control the underlying environment, storage/memory, traffic volume, predictability, etc. Serverless is clearly here to stay, but not all organizations will benefit from it. If you’re considering going serverless, but are not sure, talk to us.

Why and how to migrate MS SQL server DB schema?

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 06:09:05 +0000

Migrating a database from on-premise to cloud can be a daunting task, but it can also be an opportunity to save costs and improve efficiency. In this blog, we’ll share our experience of how we migrated our client’s MSSQL Server database to an open source PostgreSQL database hosted on AWS cloud, and the benefits it brought.

The time estimations for the migration were based upon the complexity of individual databases. For highly complex databases, which had a huge number of entities like procedures, functions, triggers, etc., the average migration time would be around 10-12 weeks based on our past experiences. Similarly, for simpler databases with fewer numbers, the migration time is around 5-6 weeks.

After migrating the database to the cloud and using AWS services like AWS Aurora, we were able to save the client almost 400K$ to 500k$ in both operational and licensing costs. This was a significant reduction in their expenses, which allowed them to invest more in other areas of their business.

This database migration was developed in a separate environment, not in production. Once the complete database was tested and analyzed, the database was moved to production by replacing the original database, resulting in close to zero downtime in the application.

During the migration, we also included an additional feature to test the logical entities in the database using unit testing. By writing unit tests and creating a dynamic HTML code coverage report, we were able to analyze and pinpoint exact blocks of code that were not unit tested.

The whole operation of unit testing and code coverage calculation was automated using Jenkins pipeline, and testing was done in containerized databases. This resulted in an extremely fast and efficient testing methodology, and we were able to test around 300 entities within a span of 10 minutes.

Thanks to this testing feature, the client could test their complete database within 10 minutes and increase the standardization and confidence during feature deployments, upgrades, and analysis of their database.

In conclusion, migrating to open source databases can bring significant cost savings and improved efficiency. By utilizing AWS services and implementing automated testing methodologies, we were able to migrate our client’s database to PostgreSQL and save them a significant amount of money.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask us.

Ten Reasons to Handover Your Cloud Management to an MSP

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 06:31:44 +0000

Moving to AWS cloud is clearly beneficial on so many levels, higher scalability, better security, less stress about monitoring and managing your infrastructure, and so much more. But to enjoy all these advantages you need to know how to make the most of the cloud: which services you need now to optimize them, for cost and performance, how to secure your workloads, ensure resiliency, etc. The answer: AWS Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Amazon’s Managed Services Providers can help you stay competitive, solve business issues and drive key outcomes, through their expert guidance. From migrating to AWS to optimizing your workloads, your MSP works with you at every stage of your cloud journey.

Here are the top ten ways your MSP can help you get the most from your AWS cloud.

1. Savings

The upfront cost of acquiring and managing IT infrastructure in-house is one of the biggest reasons to move to the cloud, as it provides excellent economies of scale, eliminates the need to provision infrastructure, and eases administrative tasks. But it all still needs to be picked, configured, and deployed. Which calls not just for expert knowledge but several specialized tools too. Availing of the services of an MSP is a huge help in doing all of this. To begin with, MSPs already have the tools and resources you need to set up and maintain your infrastructure. Since you only pay for what you use and for as long as you use it, you are effectively reducing your costs. No to mention, you’re conserving capital by moving expenditure to Opex. So your budgets can be spent on more urgent business needs. This is a significant cost saving for SMEs.

2. Infrastructure Optimization

Building and maintaining network infrastructure involve many components and processes; and the responsibility of provisioning, monitoring, and managing all of it falls to you. When you partner with an AWS MSP, a substantial portion of this responsibility is taken off, and so are the expenses.

Migrating legacy workloads to the cloud can be a complicated affair: do you lift-and-shift, refactor, rehost, or replace your apps? MSPs can help you decide the best-fit strategy for you as well as simplify and streamline the entire process, helping you meet your business goals with a more integrated business strategy.

MSPs typically provide 24×7 management services to ensure your infrastructure is secure and available. This reduces expenses, eliminated (or reduces) downtime, removes the responsibility of managing your infrastructure, and allows more leeway to diversify and focus on your core business needs.

3. Streamlined Processes

Your processes and tasks are interlinked with the rest of your infrastructure to some degree. This means that every action you take to manage any piece of your infrastructure will have some knock-on effect on all the processes it is linked to. So before you go in for any change—an update or upgrade, for instance, you need to get on top of this complexity. Your MSP can take over the responsibility of monitoring your processes and handling changes. The MSP has the infrastructure and the expertise to handle any problem that may crop up, be it in your day-to-day routines or during new releases.

4. Data Management & Disaster Recovery (DR)

If you operate an on-premises IT Infrastructure, you know firsthand the stress of possible loss of data or server failure. This is a nightmare that haunts all businesses, even those operating their infrastructures in the cloud. Any data loss can trigger unplanned downtime, compromising day-to-day operations, negatively impacting growth, and compromising brand equity. Ensuring your data recovery processes and tools are operational 24×7 is a full-time task. But with an experienced MSP on the job, you can avoid major catastrophes, and even a major situation, should it occur, can be handled with minimal downtime.

5. Automatic Upgrades

The IT industry offers fertile grounds for new technology, with new applications, tools, and trends being released almost by the hour. Some might need just a tweak or two, but a fair number of them require major upgrades or new solution integrations. Plus the need to keep up with changing business needs and regulatory compliances often forces organizations to adopt new technologies or tools. Having a capable MSP at the helm allows organizations to navigate these changes with as little disruption as possible, and often saves you the cost of employing new talent or having to up-skill your workforce, which is a neat segue to our next point.

6. Strengthen your team without new hires or up-skilling

Along with new technology upgrades, comes the need to also upgrade your workforce’s skill sets, and this can be time-consuming and expensive. Hiring workers with the cutting-edge skills you will need won’t come cheap, and remember, those skills might soon need upgrading too. The other option is to re-skill your workforce; get them to earn the required certifications, etc. This is also a time-intensive affair, plus they won’t have any experience with the new skills and will, in effect, learn on the job.

You can avoid all this heartache and expense simply by engaging a qualified MSP. This gives you direct access to staff with the certifications and experience to match. And the responsibility for keeping those skills current rests with the MSP, not your HR.

7. Responsiveness

Although it pays to be vigilant, there are a lot of inconsequential anomalies that your security system will flag. Separating the noise from the truly dangerous can be a fatiguing business, but any miss could well be a catastrophe. A reliable MSP saves you this tedium. There are many cutting-edge tools—including several ML-powered ones—that flag potentially dangerous threats, and the right MSP ought to have access and familiarity with those tools, and will be alert to any threat.

8. 24×7 Management

In a world where downtime can severely—sometimes, permanently—damage businesses and cause major losses, you need constant supervision to ensure business continuity. MSPs bring a high level of security scrutiny that will pre-empt problems and catch anomalies before they cause security breaches and/or compliance issues.

A properly qualified and experienced MSP will ensure that your infrastructure is constantly monitored and requirements are taken care of as and when they arise, with the right solution—such as updates, security patches, or audits.

Putting your infrastructure under close and constant scrutiny also ensures that you meet any required compliances.

9. Resources freed to focus on core business

With a qualified and experienced MSP keeping a 24×7 watch on your workloads and data in the cloud, your staff is free from routine tasks like monitoring, updates, and maintenance. This effectively releases your organization’s resources from infrastructure- and process-related responsibilities, allowing them to focus on core business activities, such as product/services innovation, sales, and growth.

10. Centralized Data

When you migrate to the cloud, your operational data and information are moved to a centralized system. And this brings several benefits:

Higher data integrity

With your data consolidated in one central location, you have one single source of truth—the assurance of reliability and accuracy wherever the data is used, throughout the organization. You also enjoy better data portability.

Lower data redundancy

One of the big downsides of autonomous databases is that it leads to data duplication. Centralizing the data reduces redundancy, which helps reduce errors. It means everyone will be working with the same data sets.

Reduced cost

Since your data is in one centralized location, you’re also saved the need to pay for multiple locations, this also includes the cost of administration, and multiple license fees (for different software). It is also a time saver, since you can collate and analyze data easily, as you don’t have to consult multiple data sources.

Better insights

With cleaner data comes the opportunity to mine it for real actionable insights, allowing for better business planning and reporting.

As we’ve seen there are many definitive advantages to engaging with the right MSP. As part of AWS’s Partner Network, we have in-house expertise and cross-industry knowledge to help you meet your cloud goals, quickly and cost-effectively.

Need help with your cloud? Connect with Applied AI Consulting (AAIC) today.

Steps for Successful Migration from GitLab to GitHub

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 06:08:35 +0000

Are you concerned about not being able to host everything on GitLab?

Well, you are not alone.

Many businesses face this challenge.

You may have used a self-hosted GitLab instance to host your software repositories because of the obvious benefits it promised like:

No limits on the number of (private) repositories or amount of storage.
Full control over the hardware.

However, when the hardware underlying the self-hosted instance reached end-of-life, and limited time for maintenance starts creating more mess than good you might look for another solution. Right?

This is what happened with a leading content marketing platform and we helped them Migrate from GitLab to GitHub successfully.

Would you like to read the whole case study? Get it Now!

Why Migrate From GitLab to GitHub?

Both GitLab and GitHub are designed to make it easy for developers, designers, and team members to collaborate on the same project. It ensures everyone has the same access to the latest code and all modifications are tracked.

Open-source repositories are supported by both, but they use different programming models. And to help you understand why companies choose to migrate from GitLab to GitHub, Here’s a breakdown of a few challenges with GitLab and the benefits of using GitHub.

GitLab Challenges

GitHub Advantages

Inability to host everything on GitLab.
If your client’s team is familiar with GitHub, then onboarding them on GitLab will take much effort.
GitLab’s slack integration isn’t efficient enough.
Unlimited public/private repositories.
Unlimited collaborators.
Easily works with a third-party CI program like Jenkins, CircleCI, or TravisCI.
Emphasizes speed.

Steps to Successfully Migrate from GitLab to GitHub

Based on the below migration process, We at AAIC, follow the entire migration planning and execution steps to successfully migrate Gitlab Code Repositories to Github.

There are certain aspects to this process that are crucial. Mentioning below the points we put special attention to

Generation of Artifacts like jar or war files.
Understanding and deploying to appropriate environments.

You might have got the idea of how the GitLab to GitHub migration process works. Our team at AAIC makes it easier for you through the well-architected frameworks. Besides migration, we help companies master performance and collaboration through our DevOps services.

Want to know more? Book a free 30 minutes consultation call

Want to Reduce Operational Cost By 70%? Time To Migrate From Rundeck To AWS Batch

Fri, 27 May 2022 09:33:05 +0000

Delays in feedback not only raise the cost of fixing problems but also result in various additional issues.

Hence to make things faster companies are adopting automation for different tasks.

Rundeck and AWS Batch both serve the same purpose of automating and making things faster and easier. But they are different in terms of adding value.

Rundeck is a runbook automation platform that is used to make common operations more self-service for others in an organization. To understand this,

Assume you’re a software engineer who’s built a script to clear a cache, restart a service, or run a data processing job. If you or your team are the only ones with the permissions and experience to securely run that script, you may soon become a constraint for others in the company that require that task.

Rundeck allows you to convert this script into a GUI-based internal tool that you can share with others. Anyone with the appropriate rights can then run the script themselves, even if they lack the knowledge or access to do so.

Want to automate Testing? Try AITest!

However, there are some aspects of Rundeck that make it difficult to use and expensive.

Let me tell you the challenges of one of our clients who operated in a marketing & advertising agency in the USA and How Migrating to AWS Batch helped them save 70% of their operational cost.

Challenges of a Content-Based Marketing Business with Rundeck Platform

Being a content marketing platform, they target helping companies that wish to produce and expand their own content for the purpose of new customer acquisition. But they were facing the following challenges:

Once they figured out their problem, they started looking for the right solution. This is where AAIC came into its visibility. With over 60+ percentage of AWS certified professionals and work history, they knew we can bring the optimal solution.

Solution Steps To Reduce the High Operational Cost and Visibility Issue

After looking into their high operational cost and visibility issue, we knew they needed to migrate to AWS Batch service in place of Rundeck.

For a quick intro, AWS Batch has its own console where on the dashboard we get all the details of the jobs that are scheduled.

As per our suggestion, they migrated to AWS batch and further our AWS Experts:

Composed it in 5 spot EC2 instances to run the batch jobs.
Configured and stored all the configurations and secrets in AWS Secrets Manager.
Used AWS Cloudwatch event rules to schedule the jobs.

All the batch jobs were deployed in a production environment using terraform automation. This helped manage the entire job scheduling and configuration as a code.

This is how we helped them fix failures and errors quickly and redeploy them with a click.

Common Technology Stack Used For Rundeck To AWS Batch Migration

Need AWS Professionals? Hire experts

Key Aspects while migrating From Rundeck To AWS Batch

Understand the existing jobs, frequency, and dependencies.

Job Customization to make work with AWS Batch.

POC of AWS Batch

Scalability & Performance

Apart from the AWS-specific solution, we have our own accelerators, which include marXeed, DevOps-in-a-box, and AITest, that allow our customers to realize the value in days or weeks.

Want to know more? Book a free 30 minutes consultation call

The Ultimate Cost of AWS Migration Checklist

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 09:33:51 +0000

Migrating to the cloud is the need of the hour for any business. It is a well-established fact that the AWS Cloud environment is easy to use, offers flexibility to businesses, and is scalable, secured, and reliable.

But before jumping ship, you would want to know the cost of cloud migration – specifically to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Cloud systems offer hordes of cost benefits, which is what makes them so attractive.

So, does AWS offer cost benefits?

What are the cost benefits of migrating to the AWS cloud?

*What role do AWS partners play here? *

We will find out about all these and more in this blog.

Determining the Cost of AWS Cloud

It is difficult to zero down on an amount for AWS cloud migration because things aren’t this simple here. There are many things to consider – some obvious but many pretty much unknown. We shall attempt to explain the various facets of cloud migration with Amazon Web Services here.

But, first, let’s look at some of the obvious cost determiners.

Talk to AWS Expert

What are AWS Credits?

AWS Credits can be redeemed when paying for costs associated with certain AWS services. They get applied to your AWS account and can be used until they expire. There is a right order of using the credits and by this, we mean working with a lot of details.

AWS has a method of calculating credits that are based on your estimated usage of the cloud system. This is calculated with the help of a simple monthly calendar.

Credits is an AWS Partner Network (APN) led to proof of concept so to benefit from Credits you must partner with an APN.

Mitigating Risk of Cost Escalation with AWS Credits

Since the aim of cloud migration is to overcome latency and improve operational speed while mitigating cost escalations, you must know (and use) AWS Credits.

When you migrate to a new cloud-based system, initially you must have leveraged a sizable volume of cloud services – even if that means paying for more than what you currently need.

Paying for more services initially will undoubtedly seem like a burden. Fortunately, there are ways to cut costs. Make use of promotional credits offered by Amazon Web Services that will lessen the initial financial impact. While they get added to your AWS account, you must first know how to use them.

Before migrating to AWS, it’s important to understand the labyrinth that covers computing capabilities, storage, databases, networking, analytics, security, and more. The best way to pave your way through all this is to work with the toolmakers, or in other words with AWS Partners.

APNs help partners build their AWS accounts by offering business, marketing, and technical support all along the way. Joining hands with APN partners will leverage you to:

Want to Know More

Does AWS Prefer You Use AWS Microservices?

AWS Microservices offer an architectural and organizational approach to development. Primarily owned by self-contained teams, Microservices aim to build independent components that in the future will function as individual services processes. Along the way, they use lightweight APIs that are specifically built after assessing unique business capabilities.

Microservices attempt to overcome the limitations traditionally seen with monolithic architectures. As Microservices help to scale applications, it improves cycle times in organizations. Though Microservices is not without its faults and limitations, it does lower-cost infrastructure which may prove beneficial.

What’s the Cost of Putting Data into AWS? What’s the Cost Of Moving Data Out of AWS? Does it Make Sense to Get A Lot Of Data Out of AWS? It is not uncommon to overlook the cost of data transfer while using a service such as AWS. However, understanding it is important in your cost-cutting measures.

Typically, charges for data transfer between AWS and the Internet are based on a per-service basis. However, there are no data transfer charges if the internet getaway is used in a Region for public endpoint access to an AWS service. But if your workload is distributed across different Regions, then there is a charge for the data transfer.

If you are moving components within your workload, charges may be applied depending on where these components are currently deployed.

At the end of December 2021, AWS made certain pricing changes for data transfer. For the first 10 million HTTP/S requests made each month, the first terabyte out of Amazon CloudFront and the first two million, CloudFront Function invocations made each month are now free of cost. Additionally, AWS has removed the limitations of 12 months on data transfer out of CloudFront.

AWS has further introduced a scheme where the first 100 GB of data transfer per month out of all Regions (except China and GovCloud) will not be charged. Also, AWS has removed the limitation of 12 months on free data transfers from AWS Regions.

Which AWS Services Are Costly?

There are five pricing models offered by AWS. They are designed to help you optimize costs and plan your budget. While planning your AWS project, you can make use of more than one model.

These five models are:

Amazon pricing can be extremely complex, with many factors playing significant roles. Pricing may vary depending on demands, shifts, etc. There are many AWS Services you can use for your business. The general opinion is that the Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosting – D2 Server is the most expensive AWS service. You may end up paying an estimated $6.072/hour for hourly usage.

How AAIC has Reduced AWS Cost for Customers

The best way to understand AWS cost is to work with an APN Partner who can direct you toward cost-saving services that best suit your requirements. As an advanced AWS consulting partner, AAIC has proven repeatedly that reducing AWS costs is possible. We

Help to co-create and deploy cloud-native applications built for open, secure & hybrid platforms.
leverage Kubernetes and DevSecOps tools.
Embrace a continuous innovation culture with a CI/CD approach.
Rapidly develop and deploy scalable enterprise applications.
Reduce operational expenses by lowering capital expenditures.
Mobile-enabled backend apps and build native mobile apps.

Book a free consultation call with our AWS experts.

Click to Consult uses Serverless Backend Solution to better reduce infrastructure costs and implement modernized solutions.

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 10:53:48 +0000

Click to Consult uses Serverless Backend Solution to reduce infrastructure costs better and implement modernized solutions.

Client Information

Click to Consult

Clicktoconsult is company which provides E platform for service seekers to access quality professionals & consultants and avail their services using audio & video conferencing.

Customer Goal

Customers seeking professional consultancy services will have instant access to country wide verified top-notch consultants providing consultancy over a wide range of services.

ClickToConsult will be a cost effective and time saving Mobile Application platform, eliminating the need to travel for the service seeker and consultant. Customers will be able to consult professionals who otherwise would be beyond reach due to distance and lack of awareness of existence.

Why DevOps for mobile app development

As a software engineering approach, DevOps combines Development and Operations and envisages a seamless collaboration among various stakeholders.

These include project managers, developers, testers, and members of the operations team.

With DevOps implementation, a roadmap is laid for every stakeholder or department with the proper demarcation of responsibilities.

In other words, everyone gets clear visibility of the business goals and works in close coordination with others.

CLICK TO CONSULT

Clicktoconsult is company which provides E platform for service seekers to access quality professionals & consultants and avail their services using audio & video conferencing

Location

Plot no. 263, sector 27, Pradhikaran, Nigdi Pune 411044. Maharashtra

How the solution was deployed to meet the challenge

Modernizing the continuous delivery wherein the app and its environment is deployed automatically and on-demand.
Continuous planning and integration: Continuous planning envisions collaboration between the entire mobile app team to finalize the scope of work.
GitHub Actions used for Continuous integration and deployment
AAIC implemented unit testing and coverage which takes care of validating the builds before merging it to the main branch.
CloudFront with S3 used for static content distribution. In Gitlab action have Unit testing stage and Coverage which is the same as the backed pipeline.
Web based interface is deployed to manage administration activities.
ClicktoConsult backend will be hosted AWS serverless lambda. Lambda functions will be invoked on-demand when there is request to the API gateway.

Third-party applications or solutions used

Razor pay is used with an application as a Payment gateway to handle the transaction
Firebase is used to send out push notifications to android and IOS platform.

AWS services used as part of the solution

AWS Stepfunctions, AWS Lambda, AWS RDS, AWS S3, AWS SES, AWS ECR, AWS Cloudfront, AWS SNS, AWS SQS, AWS API Gateway, AWS Cloudwatch, AWS ELB, AWS Cognito, AWS WAF, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Route53

Go Live Date

March 2022

Benefits of implementing Mobile DevOps

The host of benefits derived by implementing mobile DevOps methodology in the value chain is as follows:

Quick delivery of quality application
Superior customer experience
Quick remediation of errors and bugs
Enhanced collaboration between teams
Reduced risk
More time to innovate

Outcomes

ClickToConsult Application will provide consultants visibility pan India / Middle East with the ease of providing consultancy to customers who would otherwise be out of reach, all this from their home or office
Serverless Solution helped CTC to save the cost as Developers are only charged for the server space they used and no cost involved in managing the infrastructure.

Architecture diagrams of the specific customer deployment

Conclusion

As a general approach for app development, DevOps can help businesses to add value, increase efficiency, and improve the bottom line.

At AAIC, we standardize efforts and ensure accelerated time-to-market with DevOps testing solutions. We focus on delivering improved deployment quality with greater operational efficiency.

Our DevOps testing specialists with their deep experience in Continuous Integration (CI) testing & Continuous Deployment (CD) help configure & execute popular CI/CD tools supporting your DevOps transformation & application testing efforts.

This enables our clients to accelerate the release of applications into production and sustain continuous feedback and improvement across the software lifecycle. With the right mix of Commercial and Open Source tools, we bring in the best solution to give you a Collaborative development and Continuous testing environment.

CI/CD Pipeline to deploy Backend API

For CTC we were using GitHub Actions for Continuous integration and deployment We are doing unit testing and coverage when MR is created from a feature branch to Develop and Ons these stages run successfully we merge the branch then the Build stage start where we install some dependencies for serverless and then the Deploy stage will run in which we are deploying the serverless on AWS.

CI/CD Pipeline to deploy Frontend API

We are using Cloudfront with S3 for static content distribution. In Gitlab action we have Unit testing stage and Coverage which is the same as the backed pipeline After MR is merged we will run the Build stage where we will build the code after that Deploy stage will run where it will copy the artifacts code to S3 bucket and after that, we will run invalidate cache.

AAIC is technologyservices company that provide high-end engineering services and is proficient in enterprise class for IT-delivery.AAIC focus on Automation in Cloud and DevOps

7 Targets goes Serverless in AWS Cloud to achieve AI-based Email Assistant

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 10:15:46 +0000

7 Targets goes Serverless in AWS Cloud to achieve AI-based Email Assistant with scalable and working solution for send and receive emails.

Client Information

7Targets AI Sales Assistant

7Targets is a SaaS B2B company in the Sales and Marketing domain focused on lead nurturing. It has a flagship product ‘AI Sales Assistant’ which has the capability to write emails and do follow-ups with the leads. As well, to read the received responses and act accordingly.

Customer challenge

Being an email-based AI Assistant and SAAS Product, the 7Targerts team were performing manual deployments in their environments. This made the development process highly prone to human errors, reduced efficiency and affected the code quality.

So 7Targets team was looking was faster, efficient upgrade and rollback process in the application deployments.

Specific project-level challenges were:

Increased development and deployment time with increased backlog.
Increased release cycles for production upgrades
Process did not allow optimal utilization of resources

7targets AI Assistants

AI Sales assistants that help sales teams win more customers
AI assistant automatically follows up with all your leads to convert more leads into Hot leads so that you can focus on closing more deals

Location

Creaticity, Off Airport Rd, Yerawada, Pune, Maharashtra 411006

How the solution was deployed to meet the challenge

Applied AI Consulting worked on a solution

The client was using Gitlab as their version control system for which Gitlab CIs were implemented for each environment that would get triggered whenever any commit was made to the corresponding branch of each repository.
GitLab flow model was implemented for branching strategy.
As soon as the code was merged into develop and main branch, Gitlab CI would get triggered and pull the code from repository and trigger the build the code.
Based on the repo type, GitLab CI was generating the Zip files and container images and uploaded those to AWS S3 and AWS ECR respectively for respective development and production environment.
Upon successful build, Another Gitlab CI job would get triggered and it would Deploy the artifacts ( Containers and Lambda Zip files ) to the Lambda and ECS environments.
At the end series of automated tests were executed to verify deployments and Gitlab CI rollbacks were implemented to deploy the previously stable running version of the application.

AWS services used as part of the solution

AWS S3, AWS ECR, AWS Lambda, AWS ECS Farget,

Go Live Date

May 2020

Outcome(s)/results

With fully automated CI/CD solution, any scope of human prone errors was removed which increased fastened the entire development cycle.
With automation in the development cycle, the time to market of this SAAS application was reduced to 80% with three to five upgrades on daily basis.
As the development lifecycle was automated, developers now spend more time development rather than operations.

Architecture diagrams of the specific customer deployment

AAIC is technologyservices company that provide high-end engineering services and is proficient in enterprise class for IT-delivery.AAIC focus on Automation in Cloud and DevOps

Update AWS RDS major version with zero downtime

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:15:00 +0000

Background

We have distributed architecture based on microservices running in AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda. For data persistency, AWS RDS Aurora MySQL is used. While there are other services being used, those are not of interest in this use-case.

Approach

After a good deliberation on in-place upgrade by declaring a downtime and maintenance window, we realized that having zero downtime upgrade is the need. As without which we would have created a processing backlog for us. The high-level approach was:

Create an AWS RDS Cluster with the required version and copy the data from the existing RDS Cluster to this new Cluster.
Setup AWS DMS(Data Migration Service) between these two clusters
Once the replication is done and is ongoing then switch the application to point to the new DB. In our case, the micro-services running in AWS Fargate have to be upgraded with the new endpoint and it took care of draining the old and using the new.

Exact steps and process we followed:

There are some specific aspects to be careful about and are mentioned below.

Take a Snapshot of the existing RDS cluser, we may need it as a backup, just in case.
set binlog_format = ROW, in the parameter group of existing RDS cluster(Mysql 5.6). The will need RDS reboot. That was the only short downtime.
Since our procedure involves a logical backup and restore, we had to make sure the binary log files are kept for a enough time. With a regular MySQL server, the variable “expire_logs_days” controls the binary log files retention time. With RDS, you have to use the mysql.rds_set_configuration. We set it for 3 days. You can choose based on your data size and accumulation.

CALL mysql.rds_set_configuration('binlog retention hours', 64);
CALL mysql.rds_show_configuration;

Set the log_bin value on if it is off.

SET GLOBAL log_bin = ON;

Now create a new RDS Aurora MySQL 5.7 cluster. Do the same configuration as we did for MySQL 5.6 in the newly created cluster
Now we can setup DMS, but before that note the limitations of AWS DMS. There are many, the one we encountered was the AUTO_INCREMENT attribute on a column isn’t migrated to a target database column. You can check the details at AWS DMS
We created the dump of the existing RDS and restored the dump to the new RDS cluster

mysqldump -h yourhostnameorIP -u root -p --no-data dbname > schema.sql
mysql -h yourhostnameorIP -u root -p dbname < schema.sql

With the DB and data created in the new RDS Cluster, let’s setup DMS.
We created Source and Target Endpoint and then the DMS instance and DMS task
When creating DMS task, note below settings:

Target table preparation mode - Do nothing
Enable validation
Enable CloudWatch logs
Enable premigration assessment run

Once above configuration for DMS is done, started the replication process
After full initial load is migrated and ongoing replication is going on, think of a time where you can change the endpoint of your application to the new RDS cluster. But before that check the count of all the tables in the new cluster and compare it with the original cluster. If some counts are not matching then reload tables in DMS. We faced this issue of some tables haven’t got the complete data and reload fixed tables fixed it. This is very critical step before the applications starts using the new RDS Cluster. More info at AWS DMS reload tables
With ECS Fargate behind a load balancer, we started a new ECS task with the application now pointing to the new RDS. As soon as the new task became healthy in the target group, we deregistered the old target from the target group so that all the new request of DB will go through the new target.
Done, the major version upgrade from 5.6 to 5.7 for RDS Aurora MySQL was achieved with close to zero downtime. Only downtime was the DB Restart for the config change.

Hope this helps you. You can drop an email to contact@appliedaiconsulting.com if any questions.

Cloud Native Development | Applied AI Consulting

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