Cloud Engineering Case Study
We migrated critical transit systems to a secure cloud-native environment that increased reliability, scalability, and operational resilience.
Outdated Infrastructure Was Slowing Operations
The regional transit authority was relying on aging on-premises infrastructure, leased data centers, and separate vendor systems to run its services. This setup was costly, difficult to manage, and unable to support the demand of growing transit, which was increasing the risk of service disruptions for millions of passengers.
High Infrastructure Costs
Their 40% annual IT budget was consumed by hardware maintenance, data center lease renewals, and vendor support.
Unreliable System Performance
Outdated systems, manual recovery processes, and disconnected platforms were making operations less reliable, which led to service issues during busy travel hours.
Security Issues
Older security practices, system updates, and limited data encryption were increasing cybersecurity risk and making it harder to meet compliance requirements.
Migration to Cloud-Native Environment
Assess Existing Systems
We reviewed the transit application portfolio, identified system dependencies, and grouped workloads based on performance needs and compliance requirements.
Built Cloud Architecture
Created a multi-region cloud foundation with infrastructure as code (IaC), Zero Trust networking, and automated security guardrails for a secure environment.
Test Before Full Migration
Before migrating rider-facing applications, we moved the non-production workload, then tested the performance, and improved migration runbooks.
Migrate
Completed live migrations during planned maintenance windows by using blue-green deployments and continuous replication to keep rider impact low.
Improve Performance
Optimized cloud resources, implemented FinOps practices, and built automated scaling to improve performance and reduce cloud costs in the long term.
Cloud Engineering Deliverables
Cloud Infrastructure
Built a secure and scalable cloud environment with compute, storage, and networking across multiple availability zones by using infrastructure as code.
Zero Trust Security
Applied Zero Trust security with identity-based access, encrypted data, network micro-segmentation, and compliance monitoring.
Automated Reliability
Set up auto-scaling, automated backups, and multi-region disaster recovery so that the systems become reliable and achieve recovery within the required time.
Kubernetes Deployment
Moved applications to managed Kubernetes with automated deployments, service mesh, and built-in monitoring.
Faster Software Delivery
Built CI/CD pipelines, GitOps workflows, and automated testing so that the development teams could release updates quickly and with fewer errors.
FinOps Governance
Added resource tagging, budgets, cost tracking dashboards, and right-sizing policies to reduce unnecessary spending and maintain a 52% of cost reduction.
Results Achieved
Reduced infrastructure expenses by removing data centers, improving vendor contracts, and managing cloud usage through FinOps.
Improved system reliability with automated failover and cloud setup, which reduced downtime from hours each quarter to minutes per year.
With cloud engineering capability, we reduced recovery time from more than four hours to under one hour by using tested recovery plans and automated recovery processes.
Build Secure and Scalable Cloud Infrastructure with Kerndev
Partner with Kerndev to build secure, scalable, and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure for your most critical missions.