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How HYMDL Transformed The Medi Group’s Cloud Infrastructure

· 6 min read
Ravi Tiyyagura
CTO

Opportunity​

The Medi Group, an ERP solution provider specialized for Advertising Agencies, was poised for significant growth and needed to replatform their product to microservices. They aimed to leverage Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) for containerization. However, they faced several critical challenges:

  1. Lack of Visibility: They had limited insight into their current AWS environment, hindering their ability to plan effectively.
  2. Cost Management Issues: Without a clear understanding of their AWS costs, identifying opportunities to save was difficult.
  3. Security Concerns: They were unable to identify and mitigate security issues, posing a significant risk to their operations and compliance.

To address these challenges, The Medi Group sought a comprehensive solution that would provide enhanced visibility, robust security, and cost optimization. HYMDL was the chosen platform to drive this transformation.

Objectives​

The primary objectives of implementing HYMDL for The Medi Group were:

  1. Achieve Comprehensive Visibility: Gain a detailed understanding of the existing AWS environment to facilitate effective planning for the new microservices platform.
  2. Optimize Costs: Identify and implement cost-saving opportunities within the current and new AWS environments.
  3. Enhance Security: Identify and resolve security vulnerabilities to ensure a secure transition to the new platform.

HYMDL Advantages for The Medi Group​

HYMDL's cloud management platform offered several key advantages that aligned perfectly with The Medi Group's needs:

  1. Unified Cloud Management: HYMDL's platform provides a single-pane view of the entire AWS environment, aggregating data from various AWS services to offer a comprehensive operational overview.
  2. Advanced Security Features: The platform includes agentless scans with over 1,000 security checks, visual relationship mapping, and AI-driven security recommendations for AWS resources.
  3. Cost Optimization Tools: HYMDL offers detailed insights into AWS costs, enabling proactive management and optimization strategies to reduce wastage and manage expenditures effectively.
  4. Compliance and Governance: With customizable dashboards and automated reporting, HYMDL ensures regulatory compliance and governance across AWS deployments.
  5. AI-Driven Insights: Leveraging Generative AI, HYMDL provides actionable insights and recommendations, helping organizations make data-driven decisions about their AWS infrastructure.

Implementation​

Phase 1: Assessment and Planning​

Initial Assessment: The implementation began with a thorough assessment of The Medi Group's existing AWS environment. HYMDL's tools were used to collect data on current resource utilization, cost, and security posture across services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).

Baseline Establishment: A baseline for AWS accounts and resources was established using HYMDL's account vending machine, ensuring standardized account structures and integration with AWS Organizations.

Security Audit: An agentless security scan was conducted to identify existing vulnerabilities. HYMDL's visual relationship mapping highlighted critical security issues and interdependencies.

Phase 2: Implementation and Migration​

Visibility and Cost Management: AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) export process was created for The Medi Group's AWS accounts. HYMDL FinOps module enriched the CUR data with additonal metadata collected for each account through the HYMDL Governance Accounts and Tags module. Custom Amazon Quicksight dashboard was published to meet the needs of The Medi Group.

Security Enhancements: Identified security vulnerabilities identified by HYMDL's CSPM module were addressed using HYMDL's AI-driven recommendations, improving the overall security posture of the AWS environment. This included configuring AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) encryption, and AWS Security Groups ingress rules.

Microservices Deployment: New AWS accounts were vended using HYMDL Account Vending Machine module for the application replatform. Amazon EKS was deployed on the new platform, and microservices were successfully transitioned, leveraging HYMDL's orchestration capabilities in conjunction with AWS CloudFormation and AWS Systems Manager.

Results​

The implementation of HYMDL brought significant benefits to The Medi Group:

  1. Enhanced Visibility: Achieved comprehensive visibility into their AWS environment, enabling better planning and management across all AWS services. The Medi Group application team was able to see a visual representation of their distributed microservices environment detailing the relatoinships between services.

  2. Cost Savings: Realized substantial cost savings by optimizing AWS resource utilization. Specific savings included:

    • Cloud Costs: Reduced overall AWS expenditure by identifying and eliminating wastage.
    • Design Estimates: Application team used HYMDL's shift left FinOps module to get an early estimate of EKS deployment by uploading their design document and Non functional requirements. HYMDL AI Engine also provided recommendations for optimizing the deployment by suggesting node instance types, backup strategies etc.
    • Storage: HYMDL Cloud Inventory identified and marked old EBS Volumes and EC2 instance Snapshots. Client defined a Workflow on HYMDL which deleted the marked resources resulting in emilimating approx 5TB of unused storage.

  3. Improved Security: HYMDL CSPM module identified 200+ security issues and provided recommendations with effort estimates to fix the issues. Majority of the issues were related to overly permissive Security Group ingress rules, IAM roles with excessive permissions and IAM Users with keys which were not rotated for more than a year.

  4. Compliance: The Medi Group has to maintain and prove their compliance posture for their end customers.

    • Vulnerabilities: HYMDL CNAPP module collected Amazon Inspector scan data, highlighting Critical and High OSS package vulnerabilities. AI engine provided recommended patches to apply with detailed instructions to implement the patches.
    • Evidence Gathering: HYMDL Cloud Inventory modules TimeSeries capability and Compliance Dashboard was used to gather evidence for clients SOC2 Type 2 audit, reducing the manual effort by 90%.

  5. Efficient Replatforming: Successfully deployed Amazon EKS and transitioned to a microservices architecture, enabling The Medi Group to scale their operations effectively using AWS container services.

Quantitative Outcomes​

  • Cost Reduction: Achieved an approximately 24% reduction in monthly recurring costs (MRR) on AWS services.
  • Security Improvements: Addressed over 200 security issues, enhancing overall security by more than 80% as measured by AWS Security Hub scores.
  • Operational Efficiency: Reduced setup times from days to minutes for new AWS accounts, and decreased manual chargeback processing by 90% using AWS Organizations and AWS Budgets.

Conclusion​

HYMDL played a pivotal role in The Medi Group's AWS transformation journey. By providing unparalleled visibility, robust security, and cost optimization, HYMDL enabled The Medi Group to efficiently replatform their product to microservices on Amazon EKS. This successful implementation not only prepared The Medi Group for future growth but also ensured a secure, cost-effective, and well-governed AWS environment.

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