“Ubertas Consulting have been a valued partner in helping us optimise, build and migrate our intelligent enterprise automation services to AWS infrastructures. They combine professionalism and attention to detail with a constructive and welcoming attitude, and we continue to work with them as a trusted technology partner.” Colin Bradford, SVP Customer Operations at SS&C.
About SS&C Blue Prism
Blue Prism is a global pioneer in intelligent enterprise automation, improving how employees work. It helps organisations enhance operational efficiency and agility by making it simple for individuals to automate tasks. It’s intelligent automation platform allows organisations to succeed on their path to digital transformation while improving employee and customer experiences. Its enterprise wide RPA and BPM software products, powered by intelligent automation, provide full control and governance. Blue Prism is part of the SS&C group of businesses.
Challenge
Blue Prism provides both on-premises and Microsoft Azure Cloud-based solutions to meet their clients’ stringent compliance requirements. The organisation wanted to be able to innovate faster and utilize services that complement and enable the core vision of the solutions it can provide to its client base.
To enable the platform to grow and be modernised from the outset Blue Prism focused on modern, Cloud native processes and technologies to ensure robust and repeatable deployment patterns and consistent quality of deployment, whilst enabling them to operate with minimum platform operating overhead.
As part of the brief, all aspects of both the AWS Cloud environment and the way in which Blue Prism operations teams deployed the platform were considered. This brought into focus a range of Cloud native concepts, technologies, and services available on the platform.
Solution
The solution utilises AWS native tools and services to provide an architecture which can be used to manage and configure the various customer environments in a fast and fully automated way. Blue Prism and Ubertas Consulting worked in partnership to enhance the way in which the platform was deployed, maintained, and optimised from a cost perspective.
The project was underpinned by the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), a proven methodology for Cloud adoption, supplemented with AWS funding and discount initiatives.
The project delivered the end-to-end build of an AWS best-practice platform to host SS&C Blue Prism Intelligent Automation (IA) services, along with transfer knowledge to the Blue Prism team. Key solution components are:
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform was used to script and automate the deployment of the environment. Applying modern infrastructure as code methods both assists with inventory management of the solution and importantly ensures consistency of deployment where platform changes are required.
- Landing Zone & Account Factory: An Account Factory with customisations for AWS Control Tower combined AWS Control Tower and other highly available, trusted AWS services to help Blue Prism more quickly set up a secure, multi-account AWS environment using AWS best practices including Security governance and compliance frameworks such as NIST and CIS.
- Secure Operating Procedures: A review of Cloud operations resulted in greater use of AWS Systems Manager. In addition to more common services such as automated patching, Blue Prism implemented the use of Session Manager into their day-to-day operations to enhance security around maintenance-level access to the platform.
- Platform Right-Sizing: By combining the skills of both development and operations personnel, Blue Prism was able to establish a practice for routinely reviewing the sizing requirements of the solution to ensure alignment to customers’ individual environments. This means that AWS EC2 and RDS elements of the Cloud solution operate effectively, delivering resilient and highly available resources without incurring unnecessary cost.
- Migration of established RPA platform from Azure/On-prem to AWS: Consisting of Microsoft Windows Servers and SQL Databases. Utilising managed services wherever possible to modernise VMs replaced with EC2 instances and Microsoft SQL Server migrated to RDS instances.
Benefits
The successful delivery of the end-to-end project delivered a number of technical and business benefits to Blue Prism:
- DevOps practices underpinned by the AWS Well-Architected Framework have ensured that Blue Prism is aligned to best practice in the various facets of Cloud deployment including security, performance, and resiliency of the platform. Importantly, by aligning to the AWS principles of operational excellence, Blue Prism is guided by sound DevOps practices, working with both native AWS and third-party tooling.
- Using guidance from the Well-Architected Framework Blue Prism were able to implement new ways of working and align the best practice principles of “operational excellence”. Monitoring services implemented through AWS CloudWatch constantly provides the operations teams with the data to ensure that the platform is performant and meeting the demanding requirements of its platform and customer use.
- Successful knowledge transfer and training activity significantly improve the skill-sets of the Blue Prism technical team.
Details of the MAP Migration
This section sets out details of the migrations undertaken by Ubertas Consulting as part of the MAP engagement with Blue Prism.
Migration Summary
Complex multi-phase migration from Azure to pre-staged AWS environments executed on a per-Customer basis; a consistent and repeatable process enabled the transition of each end-Customer to AWS with minimal risk and operational downtime.
Each Customer migration included the re-platforming of business-critical Azure SQL Databases to Amazon RDS for SQL Server along with the associated database transfer, and a re-host of Azure Virtual Machines to AWS EC2 including elements of re- platforming, to automate and optimise complex operational tasks.
Technical Details of the MAP Migration Project
- Securely migrated each Customers’ business-critical Azure SQL Databases to Amazon RDS for SQL Server
- Migrated each Customers’ Azure Virtual Machines to a pre- staged AWS EC2 environment using a blue-green deployment methodology and DNS switch-over, leveraging AWS EC2 Image Import / Export to de-risk migrations by leveraging existing customized Operating System base images
- Pre-provisioned connectivity to end-Customers on-premises environments further de-risked the migration by resolving connectivity issues in advance
- Automation of the full ecosystem lifecycle including bootstrapping, configuration, patching, and application deployment using the full suite of AWS Systems Manager features.
Migrate to AWS with confidence
The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) provides a clear roadmap to migrate and modernise workloads to operate in the Cloud. Ubertas Consulting provides a free-of-charge Migration Discovery solution which builds out migration options for an organisation.
Ubertas Consulting provides a migration assessment for an organisation at no cost, so they are able to understand how AWS can support their migration journey and eligibility for the AWS Migration Acceleration Program.
The Migration Discovery looks at your current state, defines the future target state, and plans the path to make full use of the AWS Migration Acceleration Program; 100% funded by Ubertas Consulting.
Why Ubertas Consulting
Ubertas Consulting is a Cloud consultancy specialising in Amazon Web Services. As an Advanced Focus Partner, AWS Migration Partner, AWS Channel Reseller (Solution Provider Program) and Well-Architected Framework Program Partner our mission is to transform the way organisations modernise using AWS. We assist companies drive innovation and build new capabilities through embracing “Cloud Native” technologies and modernising with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
To find out more about how Ubertas Consulting can help you take your next steps to migrating to AWS with confidence, get in touch via the form below.
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