From Azure to AWS: One organization’s all-in journey with AWS (XNT316)

Bona Technology's Migration to AWS

Introduction

  • Cam Hailes, a member of the AWS Worldwide Specialist Organization, introduces the session on Bona Technology's decision to migrate their workloads from Azure to AWS.
  • The presentation will cover Bona's real-world use case, the points of difference they considered, and the technical evaluation that led to their decision to go "all-in" on AWS.

Bona Technology Overview

  • Bona is the second-largest and fastest-growing social good software company, with a diverse portfolio of 18 products.
  • They operate in 5 rented data centers, have 150 vendors, and use 5 main databases, along with smaller databases for different products.
  • Their data center footprint is complex, with workloads spread across AWS, Azure, and Heroku.

Goals and Technical Requirements

  • Business goals:
    • Standardize everything in one place
    • Maintain high SLAs
    • Improve team collaboration
    • Reduce costs
  • Technical goals:
    • Leverage cloud services logically
    • Avoid proof-of-concept churn
    • Implement a single CI/CD pipeline
    • Migrate to Kubernetes clusters
    • Avoid lift-and-shift approach

Decision-Making Process

  • Bona evaluated both Azure and AWS, considering factors such as:
    • Granular control of workers
    • Single-tenant control plane
    • Avoidance of automated upgrades
    • Advanced metrics and networking setup
  • They found that 50% of their teams knew AWS better, and they already had 45% of their workloads on AWS, which was a significant advantage.
  • The technical evaluation favored AWS due to the isolation provided by EKS, the ability to control infrastructure, and the availability of the required metrics and networking capabilities.

Migration to AWS

  • Bona's migration to AWS was not a fast process, but a well-planned and strategic one.
  • They leveraged the AWS Migration Acceleration Program and received significant credits to support the migration.
  • The migration took around 8-10 months, with the involvement of software engineers, DevOps, and operations teams.
  • They adopted a "80/20" rule, migrating 80% of the workloads to AWS and keeping the remaining 20% documented for a gradual migration.

Benefits and Outcomes

  • Bona achieved a 50% cost savings for many of their products by migrating from Azure and on-premises data centers to AWS.
  • The non-lift-and-shift approach allowed them to gain valuable knowledge about their products and improve their CI/CD processes.
  • Migrating to AWS enabled Bona to undergo compliance audits (PCI, SOC2, ISO) more efficiently, reducing the audit duration from 3 months to 1 week.
  • Bona leveraged the AWS Migration Acceleration Program, which provided significant financial credits to support their migration.
  • By the end of Q2, Bona plans to have only 1.5 products remaining to be migrated to AWS, completing the majority of their migration in around 10 months.

Conclusion

  • Bona's migration to AWS was a strategic and well-planned decision, driven by their business and technical requirements.
  • The support and expertise provided by AWS, along with the availability of cloud services and tools, were key factors in Bona's successful migration journey.

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