Engineering a Healthcare Transformation: DevOps and Cloud Modernization

Background

Our client is a leader in the healthcare industry, focused on providing comprehensive primary care across the United States. The company’s mission is to enhance health outcomes by leveraging technology to deliver advanced, patient-centric services.

Initial Challenges

The company faced numerous operational challenges, from an outdated infrastructure, a lack of standardization, and escalating cloud costs. With multiple AWS accounts and dependencies on legacy systems, the organization sought to modernize its architecture, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. 

Key objectives included:

• Streamlining DevOps practices
• Implementing containerized solutions using Kubernetes
• Reducing AWS infrastructure costs
• Enhancing visibility, monitoring, and security
• Creating a robust, future-ready IT ecosystem

Solution

Forte Group partnered with the client using a managed team engagement model. Together, they tackled the challenges with a systematic approach:

Streamlined DevOps and Deployment Pipelines

- Delivered Airflow migration to EKS and improved Salesforce CI/CD pipelines
- Created numerous custom GitHub actions and workflows to standardize automation across different applications and teams
- Implemented Argo as a CI tool and CD based on GitOps

Modernized Infrastructure

- Designed and implemented a Kubernetes-based infrastructure (EKS), enhancing scalability, visibility, and security
- Migrated legacy and new services to the EKS platform
- Implemented numerous terraform modules, abstracting the infrastructure deployment on Infrastructure As Code embedding different AWS Services like including ElastiCache, RDS, EKS, WAF, CloudFront, Global Accelerator, and Datadog

Cost Optimization

- Conducted a detailed AWS cost analysis
- Reduced EC2 instance counts and resized instances to match compute resource requirements
- Developed AWS cost reports and budgeting systems to improve expenditure transparency

Enhanced Processes and Security

- Established a security baseline for EKS, centralizing AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) and enhancing compliance
- Implemented tagging strategies for better resource management

Outcomes 

• Streamlined DevOps practices led to more efficient operations, better resource management, and faster delivery cycles.

• Decreased AWS operational costs by nearly 50%, saving over $1 million annually.

• Achieved an average delivery rate above 92% across sprints with consistently high velocity.

• Delivered a modern EKS infrastructure, with enhanced security practices, and improved monitoring capabilities.

• Reduced deployment times and streamlined DevOps workflows, which boosted productivity across engineering teams.