As a leader in P&C Insurance in the US market, our client needed to migrate a legacy Business Management System Software that managed product warranties, repairs and servicing that was built on PHP, VC++, Java and Oracle into a Software-as-a-Service model. This mission critical business application processed 3 million US transactions per day and due to global expansion now needed to support the UK market within four months. The organization engaged Synechron to advise on its strategy and whether it should set up a data center in London or migrate the legacy application into the cloud.

Synechron conducted a feasibility analysis on migrating the application through Amazon Web Services cloud offerings. This required in-depth knowledge of the decade-old, complex, legacy application architecture which consisted of a Webserver in PHP, a business layer in VC++ and Java, and spaghetti code with the business logic and data access layers clubbed together across geographies. Synechron also needed to work with the client’s developers and operations professionals who were experts in their application but had no cloud knowledge.

Synechron’s Cloud Architecture team provided two distinct strategies:

• Lift and Shift – Create a clone of the current, in-house hardware and software and map it onto the cloud. While no distinct technical or business benefits would be derived from this approach, it would create comfort.
• Shift and Adopt – Break each existing application component and adopt the best services for the cloud, enabling the organization to ensure the application is built for the cloud (not just on the cloud).

Shift and Adopt was selected along with extensive document and training requirements. To implement the strategy, Synechron did a component-by-component analysis against the relevant AWS service. The project included Docker, Container registry, an Elastic File System (EFS), a Simple Queue Service (SQS), Elastic Load Balancers and Auto Scaling, and Redis.