Migrating a Retail Banking from On-Premise to AWS

Project overview

Client: A leading commercial bank that successfully implemented a Retail Banking System on the Backbase platform in an on-premise environment.

Objective: The bank sought to migrate its on-premise Backbase platform to AWS Cloud to enhance scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency while maintaining security and compliance. The migration aimed to ensure seamless customer experience during the transition and position the bank to better handle future digital banking demands.

By creating a blockchain-based ecosystem, the bank aimed to incentivize customers to use its services more frequently and foster long-term relationships.

The challenge of project

The bank faced several challenges in its existing system:

Scalability Constraints: The on-premise infrastructure had limited ability to scale during periods of high traffic, such as promotional campaigns or regulatory deadlines.
Maintenance Overhead: The on-premise setup required significant resources for hardware maintenance, upgrades, and monitoring.
Disaster Recovery: The existing system had limited disaster recovery capabilities, increasing the risk of data loss or downtime during critical events.
Performance Bottlenecks: High latency and occasional downtime affected customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Compliance and Security: The migration needed to ensure compliance with strict banking regulations while maintaining robust security measures.

Solution

The migration to AWS was carefully planned and executed to address the client’s challenges while leveraging AWS’s capabilities. The solution involved the following key steps:

Migration Planning

Assessment and Strategy:
Conducted a detailed assessment of the on-premise environment, including workloads, dependencies, and data flows.
Defined a migration strategy using the Replatforming approach to adapt the Backbase system for AWS while retaining core functionalities.
Infrastructure Design:
Designed a cloud architecture using AWS best practices for high availability, scalability, and fault tolerance.
Key services included:
- Amazon EC2: For application hosting.
- Amazon RDS: For database management.
- Amazon S3: For secure data storage.
- AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB): For load balancing and fault tolerance.
- AWS CloudWatch: For real-time monitoring and logging.
- Compliance Planning:
- Ensured adherence to financial regulations such as GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOX during the migration.

Migration Execution

Application Refactoring:
- Modified the Backbase application to optimize it for the AWS cloud environment, focusing on:
  - Containerization using Docker for portability.
  - Orchestration using Amazon ECS or EKS for efficient deployment.

Data Migration:

Migrated data from on-premise databases to Amazon RDS using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to ensure minimal downtime and data consistency.

Deployment and Testing:

Deployed the Backbase application in a staged manner:
- Development Environment: To validate cloud readiness.
- Staging Environment: For performance and load testing.
- Production Environment: After rigorous testing.
Used AWS CodePipeline and CodeDeploy for automated CI/CD workflows.

Disaster Recovery Setup:

Implemented a robust disaster recovery system using:
- AWS Backup for regular snapshots.
- Multi-AZ deployments for database redundancy.
- Amazon Route 53 for DNS failover.

Optimization and Monitoring

Performance Optimization:
- Utilized AWS Auto Scaling to dynamically allocate resources based on traffic patterns.
- Implemented AWS CloudFront for content delivery, reducing latency.
Security Enhancements:
- Secured the platform using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Key Management Service (KMS), and AWS WAF to protect against cyber threats.
- Enabled end-to-end encryption for data in transit and at rest.
Monitoring and Analytics:
- Configured AWS CloudWatch for real-time performance metrics.
- Used AWS Trusted Advisor to continuously optimize cost and performance.

Final results

The migration to AWS delivered significant improvements for the bank:

Enhanced Scalability: The platform could now handle a 200% increase in traffic during peak periods without performance degradation.
Reduced Downtime: Achieved 99.99% uptime, enhancing customer trust and experience.
Cost Efficiency: Reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs by 30% through pay-as-you-go pricing and resource optimization.
Improved Disaster Recovery: Recovery Time Objective (RTO) was reduced to under 15 minutes, with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of near-zero data loss.
Compliance and Security: Maintained full compliance with financial regulations while ensuring data security with advanced AWS features.
Faster Deployment: CI/CD pipelines enabled faster updates, reducing deployment times by 40%.

Project Details

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