Fast and secure in the Cloud

As part of the digital transformation and with the aim of being equipped for future requirements, Leadec, a global industrial service provider, is in the midst of a comprehensive reorganisation of its IT infrastructure. The company is modifying business processes on a global scale and systematically moving its applications and infrastructure systems to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Leadec’s ambitious initiative reflects the use of state-of-the-art technologies and marks a significant step towards an agile and future-orientated corporate structure.

Challenges of cloud migration at Leadec

In order to keep to the very tight schedule of six months for setting up the Cloud Launch Platform, finalising the holistic concept, migrating the first 200 or so server systems and handing over operations, the team was divided into various workstreams working in parallel. In the second migration phase, which involved around 160 additional servers, the focus of the planning was on the international location distribution of the data centres and the poor internet connection in some places. In some cases, hardware products such as AWS Snowball had to be used for the cloud migration.

Implementation of the transition project

The transition project ran in several phases. In the first phase, SPIRIT/21’s Cloud Launch Platform was conceptualised and implemented step by step together with the technical teams and the customer’s governance and billing department. Automation was set as a ‘must have’ right from the start using Red Hat Ansible and partly self-programmed modules, both for the migration and the subsequent operation of the entire environment. Following the successful completion of the pilot migration and a very extensive due diligence check, the migration was carried out over several weekends using both a lift and shift and a rebuild approach. Among other things, the Cloud Endure tool was used.

Results

Following the successful completion of the last migration wave, the focus was on stabilising operations and adapting business processes with the aim of adapting all processes as closely as possible to the flexible and dynamic cloud. The transition was successfully completed on time and within budget. All applications and infrastructure systems at Leadec run stably and efficiently in the AWS cloud.