About FairXchange
FairXchange is an emerging FinTech software and consulting provider, founded on the notion that all participants in financial markets should be able to transact at a reasonable price to build and maintain sustainable business operations.
Through their Horizon platform, FairXchange provides a state of the art analytical and collaborative tool which provides clients with insight into their trading behaviour.
The Challenge
FairXchange provides both on-premise and Cloud-based solutions in order to meet their clients’ stringent compliance requirements. By choosing to build on AWS the organisation has been able to innovate faster and utilise services that compliment and enable the core vision of the solutions it is able to provide to its client base.
The solution: How we enabled FairXchange to grow
To enable the Horizon platform to grow at scale FairXchange from the outset focused on modern, Cloud-native processes and technologies in order to ensure robust and repeatable deployment patterns, consistent quality of deployment and operate with minimum platform operating overhead. Devoteam worked with FairXchange as its AWS and DevOps partner over 12 months delivering against the principles of the Well-Architected Framework to ensure security, performance and resiliency are at the foundation of its products and services.
During the initial stages of the engagement Devoteam performed a Well-Architected Framework Review of the existing platform, as well as understanding their product roadmap. This activity identified several opportunities; an action plan was created and subsequently executed by the tripartite project team; FairXchange, AWS and Devoteam.
Well-Architected Framework
In line with Well-Architected Framework principles of operational excellence, Devoteam worked with FairXchange to migrate the deployment to a containerised environment to enhance the portability, security and operation of the platform. Benchmarking against the Well-Architected Framework also ensured compliance to security, resilience and operational best practices.
Containerisation & Serverless
FairXchange utilised Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) to store, manage and deploy the solution in the form of Docker containers. This enables the benefits of containerization in terms of portability between Cloud and non-Cloud environments and alignment of local development and production environments. AWS Fargate enables a serverless approach, abstracting away management at an infrastructure level enabling the team to focus on the application.
Infrastructure as Code
Terraform was used to script and automate the deployment of the environment Applying modern infrastructure as code methods both assists with inventory management of the solution and importantly ensures consistency of deployment where platform changes are required.
The Benefits
Through a structured process of applying the principles of the Well-Architected Framework, FairXchange is now well-placed to operate at scale and continue to innovate and evolve their solutions on AWS.
The immediate benefits of working with Devoteam has been to migrate towards native AWS services to ensure the consistent quality of software deployments whilst reducing unnecessary operating overheads. These improvements have largely been realised through effective use of containerisation and native AWS serverless technologies, alongside automation of Cloud resources where practical.
DevOps practices underpinned by the AWS Well-Architected Framework have also ensured that FairXchange is aligned to best practice in the various facets of Cloud deployment including security, performance, and resiliency of the platform. Importantly, by aligning to the AWS principles of operational excellence, FairXchange is guided by sound DevOps practices, working with both native AWS and third-party tooling.
FairXchange continues to focus on bringing market leading solutions to the industry. This is supported by leveraging AWS services to operate the platform in a secure and cost-effective manner.
Devoteam has been a valued partner in helping us optimise and build our AWS setup. They combine professionalism and attention to detail with a constructive and welcoming attitude, and we look forward to working with them again soon.
Guy Hopkins
CEO at FairXchange