client context

The client provides an innovative digital platform that combines multiple HR solutions into an integrated offering, to promote physical, emotional, financial aspects of customers’ employees. They focus on promoting holistic, people focused enterprise cultures that foster well-being, engagement, inclusion and communications through a seamless, easy to use digital experience.  ​

The client works with customers, partners and employees to collect research data, and translates it into evidence-based strategies and product enhancements which deliver innovations to improve employee experience by supporting programs, incentives and approach - which drives results in key business areas. ​

business challenge

Ten years ago, when the client started out, the cloud was in its infancy. They went down a traditional path – adopting a three-tiered application delivery stack: A development and QA environment hosted on dedicated equipment on-premise, and a production environment located in two different data centers. This required a significant investment in both hardware and software, plus, ongoing operational and maintenance costs. ​

Much of the equipment in use was nearing end of life, resulting in the question of whether it would be cost-effective to continue down the current path.  They could either purchase new equipment and continue owning the stack – or migrate to the cloud. Although they understood that the cloud was their future, there were concerns about high operational costs to maintain three “Always-on” environments ​

THE Broadpoint solution

With existing investments in Microsoft technology stack, Azure was the logical and least disruptive cloud solution. The BroadPoint team created and executed a plan to “lift and shift” the production environment –the best documented and most stable of the three environments – into Azure, and then use it as a template to build on-demand environments. We also implemented automation in each of the environments – including retirement and quiescing to help reduce operational expenses in the environment lifecycle. ​

With the core concern resolved, the BroadPoint team then helped the client understand the nouns which drive their business. Concepts like Company, Employee, Incentive and Program were brought into focus and overlaid on the existing platform. This provided a map of the seams within the application monolith and a direction to begin decentralizing into a microservices architecture. ​

While the technology solution is critical, BroadPoint takes a broader approach to address elements of organization and culture – necessary for operationalization and sustenance of the solution. Merging development, test and IT operations teams into smaller, cohesive units aligned to the business nouns not only enabled a DevOps culture and approach, but it also allowed smaller teams to operate with greater speed and efficiency.   Over time, these smaller teams extracted their areas of concern from the monolith and began to take advantage of Azure’s Platform as a Service, further reducing operational costs and the time to market. ​