Background:
Kaiju Capital, a renowned financial institution, had been operating on traditional hardware/software development practices, resulting in lower operational efficiency, slower time to market, and lack of scalability. Kaiju ran various financial analyses on market data but was unhappy with the stability and efficiency of their systems.
They partnered with Kinect Consulting to revolutionize their infrastructure and development processes. Kinect Consulting worked to deliver a robust AWS Cloud-based Infrastructure as Code (IaC) platform and trained Kaiju’s Infrastructure and Development teams on leveraging this platform’s DevOps capabilities.
Use Case Description:
Phase 1: Assessment & Planning:
Kinect Consulting initiated the project by understanding Kaiju’s existing development practices and infrastructure limitations. The team then devised a comprehensive transformation strategy. This strategy aimed to integrate the best AWS design practices to deploy container-based workloads using services like Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), and AWS Fargate.
Phase 2: Implementation:
Kinect Consulting started to shift Kaiju Capital’s infrastructure to AWS Cloud using Terraform for IaC. This step ensured every piece of the infrastructure was documented, version-controlled, and reproducible, improving reliability and consistency.
Kinect Consulting moved Kaiju’s applications to containers for compute, significantly reducing the time Kaiju spent managing servers. The use of containers over EC2 instances allowed them to scale effortlessly with demand.
For container orchestration, they leveraged AWS ECS without the need for Kubernetes or other infrastructure management. Amazon ECS was used to achieve high performance and scalability, and AWS Fargate removed the need to provision and manage servers.
Phase 3: Training:
Kinect Consulting took the responsibility of training Kaiju Capital’s teams. They covered best practices for leveraging DevOps capabilities, such as continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and infrastructure monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch and New Relic APM. This training equipped the teams with the skills to exploit the full potential of the platform and maintain the new infrastructure.
Business Transformation:
The transformation journey with Kinect Consulting led to significant changes for Kaiju Capital:
Efficiency: Transitioning to an AWS Cloud-based infrastructure resulted in drastic improvements in operational efficiency. The automation achieved through IaC and the use of DevOps practices significantly reduced the time to market.
Scalability: Leveraging AWS services enabled Kaiju to handle varying workloads and scale on demand, effectively responding to business requirements.
Cost-effectiveness: By using serverless computing and managed services, Kaiju lowered their IT costs. The pay-as-you-go model of AWS services provided further cost optimization.
Innovation: Empowered with the knowledge of AWS and DevOps practices, Kaiju’s teams were able to focus more on strategic tasks and innovation.
Conclusion:
Kinect Consulting’s expertise in AWS and DevOps guided Kaiju Capital through a seamless digital transformation journey. The successful implementation of a DevOps Cloud platform and the subsequent training provided a significant boost to Kaiju’s efficiency, scalability, and innovation, delivering a holistic business and technical transformation.
