Optimizing Infrastructure, Costs and Efficiencies [Case Study]

Migration to AWS cloud architecture

The Situation

One of the most well-known and trusted companies in digital image– hosting needed to lower the total cost of ownership of their digital assets. The infrastructure to store, catalog and search these massive archives had traditionally been hosted in on-premise data centers. Modernizing their architecture meant moving to the cloud, and they chose a trusted name in cloud technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS). Next, they needed to learn how to best use it and transition smoothly.

Cloud migration involves not only a massive shift in technology, but also a culture shift in how IT works. To start, the organization wanted to lift and shift several applications at a time into the cloud, which would require architects, developers, administrators and data engineers across several geographically dispersed teams to understand the fundamentals of AWS. The organization’s next big focus was on fully embracing the cloud and beginning to create all new applications in a cloud-native way.

This transition required a great deal of role-based education, and fortunately, they already had a training vendor in mind to help them get to the level they needed. A few early adopters within the organization had already benefitted greatly from attending virtual courses through ExitCertified, which they found via recommendation from the AWS website. Given the success those employees were already seeing, the organization decided to engage ExitCertified to help them take on the much broader task of upskilling over 200 members of their IT workforce.

Quick Facts

Industry information

  • Consumer digital file storage Firmographic information
  • Digital image–hosting company

Wanted

  • Modernized architecture by migrating to AWS cloud

Services provided

  • Instructor-led training and customized courses
  • Training at customer site and virtually through Live Virtual training
  • Integration of offerings for seamless user experience

Outcomes achieved

  • Global role-based training program that is updated every year
  • Enhanced visibility into allocation and optimization of training budget
  • Launch of dynamic new-hire program

The Solution

After discussing various available offerings with an ExitCertified business development manager, the organization purchased an ExitCertified Flex Account to help simplify tracking of training dollars and eliminate the administrative tasks associated with managing multiple students and purchase orders. The ExitCertified business development manager organized a series of interviews between the organization’s key stakeholders and ExitCertified’s cloud and DevOps subject matter experts (SMEs). Based on the feedback from these interviews, ExitCertified worked with the organization to build a custom training plan that accounted for the organization’s various roles and IT sites.

The organization favored onsite training where possible, so ExitCertified scheduled a number of private training courses focused on architect, developer and systems operations specifically for various team members at the organization’s two main locations. After completion, they also scheduled courses in big data. A smaller number of employees needed more specific training than this, but it wasn’t enough employees for the organization to warrant additional dedicated onsite courses. Instead, these employees were still able to get the training they needed by joining virtual courses on ExitCertified’s public schedule. When these initial courses ended with great satisfaction, the organization requested more rounds of courses to be delivered until the entire workforce had been upskilled.

After the everyone received the training it needed, the organization found itself with a bit of funds left over in its Flex Account, and asked ExitCertified about advanced topics. To make the most of the remaining training budget, the ExitCertified SME built an assessment for the organization to distribute throughout the team leads. The results of this assessment unearthed a few advanced topics that were in high demand across a number of teams. ExitCertified utilized these results to build and deliver a custom course at the main IT site, and many members from other teams were able to join remotely.

The organization purchased an ExitCertified Flex Account to help simplify tracking of training dollars and eliminate the administrative tasks associated with managing multiple students and purchase orders.

The Outcome

The custom-built course from ExitCertified capped off a year-long effort that left the IT organization fully able to deliver on its promise of cloud migration to both its employees and customers. With all of their applications now running in the cloud, the IT team looked to use the knowledge of advanced topics in building its next generation of cloud-native applications.