Client Overview

Our client, one of the UK’s leading financial services groups and a major global investor has embarked upon a cloud first strategy, leveraging the capabilities of Microsoft Azure to migrate and modernise key business platforms to deliver new digital services to its clients.

The Challenge

Faced with the task of migrating a major pension administration solution from an existing data centre to Microsoft Azure, our client recognised the need for a skilled and specialised Azure partner to augment internal resources and help mitigate the potential risk of this complex project.

The Solution

BlakYaks worked in partnership with the client's architecture and operations teams (and third-party software provider) to design the target Azure environment and automated deployment approach.

The shift to Azure provided an opportune moment to elevate the application's architecture, including – replacement of on-premise RDMS databases with Azure SQL (PaaS service), enhanced DevOps and CICD integration and the end-to-end automated deployment of infrastructure and application resources across seven distinct Azure environments.

Outcomes

The collaboration with BlakYaks was very successful, seamlessly migrating a mission-critical platform system to Microsoft Azure and modernising a vital application stack layer.

The client’s investment in end-to-end automation has delivered consistent and reliable deployment of both Azure cloud infrastructure and application architecture for this important LOB platform. Furthermore, the application's migration to a contemporary cloud platform shields it from the challenges of end-of-life scenarios often encountered in traditional data centre environments.

The software partner can expedite feature development confidently, empowered by the ability to roll back changes swiftly and safely, ultimately accelerating overall development speed.

Notably, the successful migration of this pivotal system to Azure has provided a repeatable blueprint for future planned application migration and modernisation initiatives.