Summary

VTT Transport Solutions Pvt Ltd., a pioneer in employee and student transportation inBangalore, had grown significantly since its inception in 2002. Their expansive fleet of over 180 company-owned vehicles and 600 attached vehicles served adiverse clientele, including IT companies, government institutions, schools,and colleges. However, the company's reliance on legacy mainframe systems forcritical claims applications and daily commute management presented a growing challenge.

The Digital Transformation Journey of VTT Transport: Bringing Mobile Solutions to Empower Corporate Commuters

As their business experienced significant growth, they encountered new challenges. A substantial portion of their critical claims applications relied on legacy mainframe systems. While thesesystems had served them well for many years, they brought challenges listed below:

Challenges of Legacy Systems

•  Inflexibility: The monolithic nature of the legacysystems made updates and enhancements difficult and time-consuming.
•  Inefficiency: Manual processes for rostermanagement, communication, and claims processing led to delays and errors.
•  Limited Visibility: VTT Transport lacked real-timeinsights into their operations, making data-driven decisions challenging.
•  Scalability Concerns: The legacy systems struggled toaccommodate the company's rapid growth and increasing data volumes.
• Security Vulnerabilities: Older systems posed a greater risk ofsecurity breaches and data loss.

VTT Transport recognised the need for a comprehensive modernisation strategy. Theirpartnership with Velocis, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, aimed to achievethe following objectives:

• Streamlined Daily Commute Management: Empoweremployees with a self-service portal and mobile app to create, modify, andcancel daily commute rosters, reducing the burden on administrative staff.
• Enhanced Communication: Implement a centralised communicationplatform to facilitate real-time communication between employees, drivers, andthe help desk, improving coordination and responsiveness.
• Operational Efficiency: Automate manual tasks, optimiseprocesses, and gain real-time insights into operations to make informed decisions.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Build a scalablearchitecture that could easily adapt to future growth and changing business needs.
• Robust Security:Ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive data byimplementing industry-standard security practices

Solution: A Deep Dive into AWS Microservices

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Velocisdistinguishes itself through the depth of our expertise and the speed of ourservice delivery. We take immense pride in contributing to our customers'success and always stand ready to collaborate in finding innovative solutionsto enhance their businesses. Velocis team collaboration with the VTT Transportteam commenced with a meticulous understanding of their requirements and challenge points.

Velocis designed a robust, cloud-native solution basedon AWS microservices architecture, a modular approach that breaks down a largeapplication into smaller, independent services. This architecture offeredseveral key advantages:

• Agility and Scalability: Each microservice could bedeveloped, deployed, and scaled independently, allowing for faster development cycles and better resource utilization.
• Fault Isolation: If one microservice failed, it wouldn't affect theentire application, ensuring high availability and resilience.
• Technology Diversity: VTT Transport could leverage the best tools andtechnologies for each specific service, optimising performance and cost-effectiveness.
• Continuous Delivery: The CI/CD pipeline enabled frequent updates andenhancements, allowing for rapid innovation and responsiveness to user feedback.

Velocis then proposed a AWS architecture after conducting a detailed review, addressingall major concerns raised by VTT Transport.

AWS EKS was finalized for application deployment, which offersthe flexibility to scale resources as required, accommodating increasing userdemands while upholding data integrity and security.

Supporting this new infrastructure is a multi-stage CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipeline, enabling smooth development-to-production deployments. This pipeline makes use of AWS services including AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, and AWS CodePipeline, ensuring a streamlined and efficient development and deployment process.

Security and encryption were top priorities in VTT Transport's design approach, with afocus on end-to-end encryption right from the project's initiation. Theseamless integration of AWS CertificateManager (ACM) with Elastic Load Balancer(ELB) and Amazon API Gateway made it straightforward to secure publicendpoints effectively. Furthermore, the integration of Amazon Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) added anextra layer of defense to safeguard against common web exploits and attacks,ensuring robust protection for the application. Velocis have leveraged key AWS services, such as AWS Systems Manager, AWS Security Hub, AWS Secrets Manager and AWS CloudTrail, tofortify the cloud infrastructure.

Monitoring the performance and key metrics ofthe VTT Transport application stack was streamlined using Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights and Cisco AppDynamics APM feature. Thisapproach offered a unified view of logs and performance data withoutnecessitating any modifications to their existing application. Additionally, Amazon SES and Amazon SNS were leveraged for notification purposes, enhancingability to stay informed about important events and updates

Solution Description

Velocisdesigned and implemented a modern microservices architecture leveraging thepower of Amazon Web Services (AWS). This solution spanned three distinct environments—Production, Development, and Staging-UAT—to ensure thoroughtesting and validation before deployment.

Microservices on Amazon EKS

At the coreof the solution is Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), which provides amanaged Kubernetes environment for orchestrating and scaling containerizedmicroservices. Each microservice, responsible for a specific business function(e.g., user management, roster scheduling, communication), was containerizedand deployed on EKS. This approach offered:‍

• Scalability: EKS automatically scaled individual microservices based on demand, ensuring optimal performance during peak usage.‍
• Resilience: The failure of one microservice did not impact others, enhancing overall system availability.‍
• Flexibility: Developers could update and deploy individual microservices without disrupting the entire application.
 

CI/CD Pipeline for Continuous Delivery

To streamline the development and deployment process, Velocis implemented a robust CI/CD pipeline using AWS services:‍

1. AWS CodeCommit: Served as the secure, highly scalable private Git repository for storing source code.
2. AWS CodeBuild: Compiled source code,  ran unit tests, and produced artifacts for deployment.
3. AWS CodeDeploy: Automated the  deployment of the application to EKS, ensuring a smooth transition from development to production.
4. AWS CodePipeline: Orchestrated the entire CI/CD workflow, automating builds, tests, and deployments, accelerating the release cycle and reducing human error.

Security and Performance Enhancements

VTT Transport's application was secured and optimized through:

• Amazon VPC: Isolated the production environment into two Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) for added security and control.
• AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and Elastic Load Balancer (ELB): Ensured secure communication between users and the application using HTTPS.
• Amazon VPC: Isolated the production environment into two Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) for added security and control. ‍
• AWS WAF: Safeguarded the application against common web exploits and attacks.‍
• Amazon Route 53: Managed DNS routing for reliable and scalable domain name resolution.
• Amazon API Gateway: Created, published, maintained, monitored, and secured APIs for microservices.
• Amazon CloudFront: Distributed the application's static content globally for faster access and improved user experience.

Additional Considerations

• ReactJS: The web interface, built with ReactJS, provided a responsive and intuitive user experience.
• Spring Boot: The backend framework handled business logic and data processing efficiently.
• MongoDB: The NoSQL database offered flexibility and scalability for data storage and retrieval.

By combining the power of AWS EKS, microservices, and a streamlined CI/CD pipeline, VTT Transport achieved a modern, scalable, and secure solution that significantly improved their operational efficiency and positioned them for future growth.

Results and Benefits

The solution proposed and deployed have resulted in significant improvements in both their application and cloud environment. Velocis efficiently implemented a production-ready microservices architecture within the agreed-upon timeframe, resulting in a fully operational application deployed on AWS resources.

VTT Transport achieved significant improvements in their application and cloud environment through this modernisation effort:

• Increased Collaboration: Collaboration between development, IT, and operations teams increased by 50%, accelerating innovation and deployments.
• Enhanced Monitoring: Proactive monitoring ensures high application performance and user satisfaction.
• Improved Reliability: VTT Transport experienced near-100% availability and zero downtime, ensuring uninterrupted service.
• Reduced Manual Administrative Tasks: Automation of administrative tasks has freed up staff for higher-value activities.
• Cost Savings: The cloud-based infrastructure has resulted in a 20% reduction in infrastructure costs compared to the previous on-premises solution.

Microservices Architecture Advantages:

• Scalability: The system can easily handle increasing user demands.
• Agility: Individual services can be updated and deployed independently, increasing development speed.
• Fault Isolation: If one service fails, it doesn't impact the entire system.
• Continuous Delivery: New features and updates can be delivered more frequently.

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