KeyedIn Migrates to AWS and Adopts Best Practices to Maximize SaaS Performance

Executive Summary

KeyedIn is a provider of SaaS solutions that enable portfolio managers, project leads, and program directors to maximize operational efficiency and productivity. The company’s products are designed to simplify business processes and automate workflows that would otherwise take more time and effort. KeyedIn also gives users significant visibility into performance metrics, allowing leaders to monitor their progress over time.

KeyedIn recently ran into an IT challenge when its data center provider informed the company that it would need to migrate to Azure in order to retain services. However, KeyedIn wasn’t interested in making that change and decided to go in a different direction by migrating workloads from various regions to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Overall, KeyedIn wanted to migrate servers and databases from three different regions.

To ensure the transition went smoothly, KeyedIn decided to bring in the AWS migration expert ClearScale for consulting support and recommendations on how to best leverage the cloud.

The Challenge

KeyedIn was hosting workloads in a traditional data center with a combination of bare metal servers and Virtual Machines when it learned of the need to switch over to Azure. Rather than move to Microsoft Azure, KeyedIn believed it would find the most success going with AWS.

However, given the scope of the endeavor and lack of familiarity with AWS, KeyedIn thought it would make the most sense to work with ClearScale, which has guided hundreds of enterprises through similar migration journeys. ClearScale, with its AWS Migration Competency and extensive track record of success, was the ideal thought partner to answer any questions that came up through the project. ClearScale also had the knowledge to set KeyedIn up for long-term, post-migration success.

The ClearScale Solution

Ahead of ClearScale’s role in the project, KeyedIn’s engineering team took the lead on the architecture design work and migration execution. ClearScale’s expertise came into play once KeyedIn’s IT infrastructure had made it over to AWS, which is when the company started to have questions related to how to run its workloads in the AWS cloud as efficiently as possible. The company was keen to learn best practices for getting the most out of the AWS cloud.

ClearScale shared recommendations on multiple levels based on a thorough assessment of KeyedIn’s infrastructure. For instance, ClearScale conducted a full audit of the deployed infrastructure and encouraged KeyedIn to create a formal Architecture Design document that included ClearScale’s findings.

ClearScale’s cloud experts also examined KeyedIn’s Storage and Database tiers, as well as made suggestions related to backup and disaster recovery. Furthermore, ClearScale conducted a formal AWS Well-Architected review to ensure the client’s new infrastructure met the quality standards put forth by AWS, as well as handed over a set of recommendations to consider.

While ClearScale did have the capability to execute KeyedIn’s entire migration, the AWS Premier Partner was happy to play an advisory role for the client, especially given the level of talent the company already had in-house. ClearScale and KeyedIn were able to work together in a way that leveraged each team’s time and resources well, enabling both firms to focus on their respective responsibilities.

The Benefits

By working with ClearScale, KeyedIn was able to lean on a trusted cloud expert and gain insight at any time on how to run and manage applications on AWS. ClearScale pointed KeyedIn towards solutions and practices to ensure the company’s SaaS solutions were scalable, resilient, and available. ClearScale also encouraged KeyedIn to explore serverless architecture and container services in the future, including AWS Lambda, Amazon Aurora Serverless, Amazon EKS, and AWS Fargate.

Should KeyedIn ever need more than a consulting partner, ClearScale can step in as the primary executor on any major project. KeyedIn’s leaders know where they can turn for specialized AWS skills and services. In the meantime, KeyedIn can continue growing its SaaS business and serving customers more effectively on the cloud.