Intelligent CIO LATAM Issue 14 | Page 63

CASE STUDY
Improving elasticity and reducing costs on AWS
JPS uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud ( Amazon EC2 ), a web service that provides secure , resizable compute capacity in the cloud , to host API services for its web portal and app and to run other missioncritical applications . its data by asking questions in natural language , exploring interactive dashboards or automatically looking for patterns .
Another staple of JPS ’ s operations is Amazon Simple Storage Service ( Amazon S3 ), an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability , data availability , security and performance .
Running applications in the cloud has resulted in massive cost savings because it has virtually eliminated the need to reinvest in on-premises infrastructure and to pay licensing costs .
JPS also migrated its database to Amazon Relational Database Service ( Amazon RDS ) – a managed service that makes it easy to set up , operate and scale a relational database in the cloud – to run one of seven relational database engines .
One of the company ’ s largest collections of data is its PDF bills archive . On AWS , it could cost-effectively store bills from as early as 2005 .
“ Managing on-premises databases proved to be cumbersome and , at times , expensive ,” said Hamilton . “ Migrating to AWS has minimized time spent on maintenance and reduced costs by more than 40 % compared to our customer-based solutions .”
“ The mobile app was a tremendous success and one of the biggest wins of our migration to AWS ,” said Hamilton .
In total , JPS ’ s cloud-based solutions have brought on more than 300,000 new users . It now has more than 200,000 active monthly users with at least 2,000

THE MOBILE APP WAS

A TREMENDOUS SUCCESS AND ONE OF THE BIGGEST WINS OF

OUR MIGRATION TO AWS .

A key part of JPS ’ s successful transition has been AWS Instance Scheduler , which can be used to configure schedules for Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS instances .
“ Deploying the mobile app in the cloud was a game changer ,” said Hamilton . “ We ’ d allotted one week for the deployment of supporting infrastructure , but we were able to complete the process in less than one day .”
JPS also found that most of its costs came from nonproduction environments .
“ We work with in-house and third-party developers ,” said Hamilton . “ Using AWS Instance Scheduler , we can manage which Amazon EC2 instances are active based on team needs and work schedules , using only what is needed and drastically lowering our development costs .” concurrent users at any time . With more than one-third of its customer base using the app to track usage and place service requests , JPS must manage fewer calls from customers .
Running on agile cloud infrastructure means that JPS no longer has to plan five to seven years into the future .
“ We have a small , intimate team , and we ’ ve offloaded a lot of operational work to AWS ,” said Hamilton . “ Using AWS has been a tremendous boost to productivity and innovation .”
The company has also bolstered the reliability and robustness of its systems .
The migration to AWS became even more valuable when around 60 % of the company ’ s offices closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic . JPS also used AWS to provide high-quality customer support and near-realtime usage data through Amazon QuickSight , which facilitates everyone in an organization understanding
“ Deploying the mobile app was the first time in my more than seven years of working on the JPS infrastructure team that we could simply spin up entire solutions with no performance issues due to how easily we can configure , deploy and scale the infrastructure ,” said Hamilton . “ Downtime is now non-existent for us .” p
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