Improving Customer Experience with Cloud Migration
Transformed Business Operations, enhanced data security, and modernized legacy systems with cloud solutions, simultaneously optimizing...
Big Language System Exits Two Data Centres with AWS
Successive Digital moved BLS’s self-managed SQL Server, Kubernetes and logging to managed AWS services in nine months, cutting infrastructure costs by 40% and lifting availability to 99.95% with 18 minutes’ downtime.
At a glance
Industry
Language services and language technology
Location
North America
Successive Highlight
40%
Reduction in annual infrastructure cost for the migrated scope (USD 1.2M to USD 0.72M)
99.95%
Platform availability achieved, up from 99.5%
About Client
Big Language System (BLS) provides language services and language-technology products to enterprise customers. Its multi-cloud portfolio spans Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and, until this project, two on-premises data centers hosting its core platform’s databases, Kubernetes clusters and logging. BLS also runs its own monitoring platform, which monitors every environment with read-only access and is central to its operations.
About this project
BLS’s core platform depended on two aging data centres reached from Azure over several unmonitored VPN links. Production SQL Server ran on a single VM with a manual, multi-hour failover; four Kubespray Kubernetes clusters and two Elasticsearch clusters needed constant patching; and the estate inventory had gaps and conflicts. With the colocation contract up for renewal, BLS chose to exit both sites and move to managed AWS services.
Solutions Implemented
Successive Digital ran a three-phase Assess, Mobilize and Migrate & Modernize programme, replatforming every on-premises component onto a managed AWS service in four risk-ordered waves, with non-production moved first so every runbook was proven before production.
Secure Landing Zone
AWS Control Tower multi-account foundation with IAM Identity Center, KMS encryption, GuardDuty, Security Hub and guardrails in place before the first wave.
Hybrid Network Bridge
One AWS Transit Gateway Site-to-Site VPN to Azure, with BGP and tunnel alarms, replaced three unmonitored data-centre tunnels and was built first.
Managed SQL Server
Moved production to Amazon RDS for SQL Server Multi-AZ with a cross-region read replica via native backup, log shipping and an 18-minute cutover.
Kubernetes on EKS
Consolidated four Kubespray clusters into three Amazon EKS clusters with Karpenter autoscaling, redeployed through GitOps (Argo CD), and moved traffic via DNS.
Managed Logging
Elasticsearch replaced by Amazon OpenSearch Service with UltraWarm; logs dual-shipped for two weeks, 30 days re-ingested and older indices archived to S3.
Outcome
Every objective met: lower cost, higher resilience, zero on-premises dependency
Annual infrastructure cost for the migrated scope fell 40%, from USD 1.2M to 0.72M, with payback in about 12 months.
Availability rose from 99.5% to 99.95%, with RTO cut from 4 hours to 1 and RPO to 5 minutes.
Production cutover completed in 18 minutes with zero data loss, and new environments provisioned in 30 minutes instead of weeks.
Both data centres exited in nine months; no self-managed Kubernetes, database or Elasticsearch clusters remain for the team to patch.
"Successive Digital helped us modernize our infrastructure while keeping business continuity at the forefront. Their structured migration approach enabled us to exit two data centers, reduce infrastructure costs, and improve platform reliability with minimal disruption to our operations."
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