Migration of CEREM Business School to AWS

CEREM Business School migrated its on-premise systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Given its current growth and projections, CEREM identified that its on-premise infrastructure would not be sufficient. Therefore, instead of investing in new equipment, it made the strategic decision to migrate its systems to AWS, as its flexibility, scalability, and security services perfectly aligned with its needs.

In this article, we will explore the initial challenges, the AWS services used, and the benefits obtained during this migration process.

Initial challenges and requirements

At the beginning of the project, CEREM's main concerns were the security and protection of its data, as well as the need for effective backup and disaster recovery mechanisms. Additionally, they sought a scalable solution that would allow them to optimize costs according to their constantly growing needs. The urgency to have the system operational as soon as possible was also a key requirement.

Key SIS components migrated to AWS

  • Integrated Resource Planning (ERP) system: centralizing areas like accounting, billing, human resources, attendance, and CRM for comprehensive management.
  • Virtual Campus: including evaluation systems and academic planning.
  • Student Portal: for admission documentation processes and payments.
  • Institutional Website: ensuring the school's online presence and functionality.

Migration support and focus on cultural change

The migration not only involved transferring systems but also a cultural change within CEREM's teams. It was crucial to convey the advantages of using AWS services: elasticity to accommodate variable demand, security with tools to stop DDoS attacks before they reach the services. Some of the improvements achieved and communicated to the technical team include:

  • Real-time monitoring: from AWS, it's possible to monitor the resource consumption of each application and the number of requests received in a given time period to take necessary scaling actions and respond to demand and/or adjust planned resource configurations to optimize costs.
  • Failure detection: through constant monitoring of application health, failures can be detected before being reported by users. For this, both customized monitoring solutions and alarm configurations are used to alert about high resource usage by our applications.
  • Reproducible infrastructure: thanks to the automation of tasks for creating the necessary infrastructure resources for the operation of migrated systems and all their configurations, effective disaster recovery can be achieved within acceptable times for the business.

AWS services used

The strategic selection of services to meet the established requirements:

AWS service delivery partner recognition

We are proud to be recognized as #ECS Service Delivery Providers and #RDS Service Delivery Providers by Amazon Web Services (AWS). These designations validate our deep technical knowledge, experience, and alignment with AWS best practices for the implementation of container workloads and managed database services.

These distinctions are the result of our constant work in all projects, but especially related to this migration of CEREM Global Business School.

Thanks to our partnership with AWS, we bring world-class cloud technologies that help educational institutions to achieve digital modernization.

Benefits of Migrating to AWS

Among the benefits of migrating from an on-premise infrastructure to a managed infrastructure in AWS are:

  • Scalability: AWS offers the ability to increase or decrease resources according to demand. This means that higher traffic or demand can be easily handled without the need to invest in or maintain additional physical hardware.
  • Cost savings: AWS offers a pay-as-you-go model, where you only pay for the resources you use. This eliminates the need for large upfront investments in hardware and allows for more efficient resource allocation, potentially resulting in cost savings.
  • Security: AWS offers a variety of security features and services, including identity and access management, encryption, DDoS attack prevention, and compliance certifications.
  • Managed services: AWS offers a variety of managed services, such as databases and compute, which can help offload operational tasks and allow the team to focus more on application development.
  • Elasticity: AWS allows automatic scaling of resources according to demand. This elasticity ensures that applications can handle different workloads efficiently without manual intervention.
  • Backup and disaster recovery: AWS offers robust backup and disaster recovery solutions. By using services like Amazon S3 for storage and AWS Backup, reliable backup and recovery strategies can be easily implemented.

Next Steps

In addition to the already productive migration of existing systems, CEREM Business School is advancing in the development of new solutions that will replace current legacy systems, specifically the Campus and the Portal. This process involves the implementation of a packaged Student Information System (SIS), which comprehensively covers the student's academic life, being a complete academic system that manages everything from academic planning to course attendance. It includes aspects such as course openings, teacher assignments, and bi-monthly course tracking, adapting to CEREM's organizational structure. This development, which will use RDS, is in the implementation phase and is expected to be fully operational in the coming months.

The migration of CEREM to AWS cloud not only met the initial requirements but also laid the foundation for a future of sustainable growth and operational efficiency.

If you found this project interesting and need to do something similar for your institution, contact us. The coffee is on us 😉

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