success story

Cloud transformation for News Corp

News Corp, a leading media conglomerate envisioned building a robust digital platform to distribute content that would help them reduce TCO and improve business efficiency. As part of this transformation, News Corp wanted to address number of challenges including applications with multiple physical instances running on diverse platforms which were making the operations expensive and consistently difficult.

News Corp planned to move 75% of its infrastructure and applications to cloud as part of its multi-year infrastructure transformation strategy. Virtusa was engaged by News Corp, North America to transform their infrastructure platform.

 

 

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The Challenge

The key business challenges include:

  • High operational costs due to applications with multiple physical instances running on diverse platforms, hence, making it expensive and consistently difficult
  • Lack of business focus due to rising operational inefficiencies
  • Difficulty to meet desired RoI objectives because of high-quality content delivery while adhering to budget pressures
The Solution

We leveraged our well-defined, phased and iterative approach to migrate applications to AWS Cloud. It comprised four phases:

  • Plan
    We assisted with overall program management office, managing all aspects of strategy, program governance, and benefits realization by implementing infrastructure transformation PMO (at a portfolio level) of in-progress migration/sunset plans across groups. We performed identification of target state of 1000+ applications while focusing on applications that included EOL/EOS components (Windows 2003 and Solaris). During this process, we also cleansed and updated CMDB based on portfolio analysis findings. We reviewed and enhanced cloud architecture and platform components. Furthermore, we accelerated continuous integration and deployments process by recommending enterprise tools to DevOps team and assisted them by implementing platform capabilities
  • Assess
    We performed macro analysis of applications leveraging a proven cloud readiness assessment framework based on Business Value, IT Efficiency and Cloud Suitability. Following which, we performed micro-analysis of a number of applications leveraging structured migration approach, repeatable process and re-usable assets limiting the cost of transformation. For each of these applications, we developed an understanding of current state architecture and defined cloud architecture based on patterns developed during macro analysis leveraging AWS Services like EC2, ELB, Route 53, RDS, SQS, SNS, and Containers etc. As part of Cloud Operating Model workstream, we provided recommendations on enterprise cloud security guidelines and enterprise cloud DevOps tools/methodologies.
  • Migrate
    During the Migration phase, we implemented cloud migrations using standard DevOps technology stacks such as Cloud Formation, Chef, Jenkins, GitHub, and Artifactory. We used many security measures offered by AWS services such as security groups, SSL, encrypted volumes, IAM, MFA to implement a secure architecture. Additionally, we created and streamlined standard DevOps scripts/cookbooks to create standard reusable assets. To ensure migration success, we provided effective program coordination across multiple LOBs (Line of Business) including management of server decommissions across the estate. With these successful migrations, we not only gained portfolio, process, and organizational understanding but also the confidence of application teams. This was instrumental in smooth change management.
  • Scale
    Now, it is time to scale. We have planned to perform mass migration to accelerate the infrastructure transformation. With infrastructure moving on the cloud, it is essential to keep a check on it. Our team is involved in cost optimization through policies, processes and monitoring. We are not only identifying under-utilized resources in existing infrastructure but also creating automation policies to constantly check and ensure cost optimization and security governance in future.
The Solution
The Benefit

Our solution helped News Corp accelerate business outcomes while achieving significant benefits.

  • Accelerated their cloud journey, improved business agility to roll out new services and reduced time-to-market
  • Reduced the risk by decommissioning some of the EOL/EOS systems as part of the cloud migration
  • Operational costs were reduced by implementing a disposable and consumption based infrastructure model
  • Reduced the total cost of ownership through enterprise-wide solutions, re-usable templates, and repeatable processes

 

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