AWS migration and IT centralization, establishing foundations and a CCoE
valantic supports mobilezone with AWS migration and IT centralization to create a uniform, efficient cloud infrastructure and secure future growth.
Due to a heterogeneous IT landscape resulting from mergers and acquisitions, mobilezone (MZ) decided to migrate to AWS and centralize its infrastructure. valantic supported MZ in this process, which was divided into three phases: “Assess”, “Mobilize” and “Migrate and Modernize”.
In the assessment phase, the existing IT landscape was analyzed and a plan for the migration was drawn up. In the mobilization phase, the necessary landing zone was provided as a multi-account infrastructure and a standard for the provision of Kubernetes clusters was defined. In the final phase, the migration candidates were migrated to AWS. Thanks to the collaboration between MZ and valantic, a scalable and high-performance infrastructure environment was created.
Challenge
mobilezone is faced with the challenge of homogenizing and centralizing its heterogeneous IT landscape, which has resulted from various mergers and acquisitions.
Consulting approach
valantic supports mobilezone with in-depth AWS knowledge and resources to facilitate the migration to the cloud and ensure best practices for implementation and compliance.
Customer benefits and solution
Thanks to the excellent cooperation between MZ and valantic, a scalable and powerful infrastructure environment was created, as well as valuable opportunities for the future.
mobilezone (former powwow GmbH) is a German telecommunications company based in Cologne. It markets provider-independent mobile phone contracts and mobile devices and is also active as a mobile phone provider. Well-known B2C brands includes Sparhandy, DEINHANDY, Handystar und HIGH mobile.
Currently, mobilezone (MZ) has a very heterogeneous IT landscape due to various mergers and acquisitions. The different brands and products are distributed across various data centers with different infrastructures. Some of these data centers must be moved out and for some applications a renewal is planned. This was the reason to rethink the grown IT landscape.
MZ decided to homogenize and centralize its existing infrastructure step by step. For this, AWS chosen as the central partner for the upcoming migrations and the rebuilding of applications. MZ is currently in the consolidation, optimization and expansion phase of its infrastructure.
valantic already supported MZ in the development of e-commerce applications. In order to meet the challenges of the upcoming AWS migrations, valantic provided MZs internal cloud operations team (COPS) with additional resources with in-depth AWS cloud expertise. These have the task of supporting the migrations to the cloud and, at the same time, using their cloud knowledge to ensure implementation and compliance, based on currently valid best practices.
valantic, leveraging the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), provided a comprehensive solution to MZs challenge. The process was divided into three phases: “Assess”, “Mobilize”, and “Migrate and Modernize”.
Assess
valantics experts started with the “Assess” phase. This involved onboarding on the one hand and defining the requirements and scope for the upcoming project on the other. The main focus here was on setting up a landing zone with AWS Control Tower. At the same time, the account creation had to be automated. At these points, attention had to be paid to the strict use of Terraform as an infrastructure as code tool. Urgently required infrastructure use cases as well as their future expandability and potential risks were analyzed and included in the strategic planning.
Mobilize
In the subsequent “Mobilize” phase, MZ and valantic worked together as a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to provide the necessary account infrastructure as a basis for migrations. This also included a defined standard for the provisioning of Kubernetes clusters (AWS EKS) as a platform for further DevOps teams. At this point, valantic was able to use its expertise around containerization and Kubernetes to establish a well-defined standard. This brought stability to the project and quickly enabled other application teams to work on their own dedicated accounts and platforms. At the same time, the conditions for the AWS MAP were created so that MZ could receive funding for the migration during the project period.
Migrate and Modernize
In the final “Migrate and Modernize” phase, the migration candidates were successively removed from various data centers and migrated to AWS.
The CCoE formed by MZ and valantic was able to support the various application teams and, above all, facilitate the new use of cloud resources through training. By using Control Tower in conjunction with AWS Organization, Config and Security Hub, important guard rails and checks could be set up to guarantee a defined level of security. The revision of the rights and roles concept was long overdue at this point.
With the help of Microsoft Active Directory and AWS IAM Identity Center, user access and administration were greatly simplified, secured and standardized. Furthermore, CI/CD pipelines were implemented on a large scale and long-lived credentials were replaced by GitLab as OpenID Connect identity provider to further increase security. One of the last tasks was the automated deployment of Kubernetes addons through a CI/CD process. For this purpose, ArgoCD was set up in a management cluster for each environment to provide application clusters and keep them up to date using GitOps methodologies.
Thanks to the excellent cooperation between MZ and valantic, a scalable and powerful infrastructure environment was created, as well as valuable opportunities for the future. On the one hand, existing applications could be successfully migrated, and on the other hand, new accounts, Kubernetes clusters and many other important resources can be provided with standardized content in the shortest possible time. This relieves the burden on operations teams and creates space for further optimization.
The current challenges are primarily concerned with expanding the service catalog of standardized solutions and procedures through the CCoE as well as helping application teams to help themselves. In the end, it is important that the CCoE is not a scarce resource for the implementation of tasks, but supports all mobilezone employees with the necessary information, helpful tips and guidelines for their daily work.
The successful partnership of both companies will continue to help get as close as possible to this goal in the future and further improve the value of the cloud strategy.
Dr. Robert Klimke
Director Advanced Cloud Solutions
valantic Software & Technology Innovations