Parasense: AWS Web Services & Migration Consultancy

The Challenge

Parasense hosted the web services they provide to their customer base on-premises, using mainly HP rack mounted servers, UPSs, back-up and VPN appliances. Underpinning the web services was a proprietary code base and SQL databases. The web services were designed to provide high-level through to low-level views of data collected from both Parasense and third-party equipment within each customer’s network.

Changing database content

Data collection occured every 5 minutes and the received data was stored in the SQL databases before being processed at 15-minute intervals into higher-level data, also then stored in the SQL databases. The result was large and almost constantly changing database content.

In 2019 Parasense developed a new web service platform, hosted entirely in AWS and this was working well, though the Parasense in-house knowledge and experience of working with AWS was limited.

Parasense, a Bacharach company, were faced with a UK site closure, following a business restructuring process undertaken by their parent company; the planned site closure was the summer of 2020. Parasense engaged with Devoteam in 2019, with a goal of migrating all on-premise web-services related infrastructure into AWS before planned UK suite closure.

The Solution

Following an initial review of the Parasense on-premises environment and associated code and customer equipment networks, Devoteam worked to plan out a Well-Architected AWS infrastructure to provide the same services at minimum cost and with sufficient resilience and ease of maintenance.

The initial planning phase of the project commenced as part of a Well-Architected Framework Review (WAFR) conducted in January 2020. The planning resulted in a set of initial designs and an approach to the project which delivered the end-to-end migration over to AWS, and transfer knowledge to the Parasense/Bacharach team.

The delivery of the project was a joint team exercise with clear lines of responsibility:

• Planning and Prototyping: Devoteam delivered the planning and prototyping tasks before completing a base AWS deployment and the migration of VQAM Core, O2 and Whole Foods related environments. Knowledge transfer and training of the Parasense team was also carried out during this activity.
• Delivering: Parasense delivered all remaining workloads including Brookshires, Giant Eagle, Gracechurch, Greenyard; and other internal environments.
• Reviews: Devoteam performed two Well-Architected Framework Reviews during the course of this project to measure alignment of the target environments to AWS best-practice.

The Benefits

The successful delivery of the end-to-end project delivered a number of technical and business benefits to Parasense:

• An on-time and on-budget migration from the on-premise platforms over to AWS;
• Successful knowledge transfer and training activity significantly improve the skill-sets of the Parasense technical team;
• A best-practice implementation based on the principles of the AWS Well-Architected Framework;
• Reduced cost of the underlying applications portfolio;
• Improved security, resiliency and performance of business-critical applications through the adoption of AWS Cloud services;
• The building of a true business and technical partnership founded on trust, joint working, mutual understanding, communication and a goal to deliver a world-class solution to host the Parasense applications portfolio taking into account the requirements of their global clients for the continued delivery of exceptional service.

Through a structured process of applying the principles of Well-Architected, Parasense is now well-placed to operate at scale and continue to innovate, evolving their solutions on AWS.