Healthcare Tech Cuts Infrastructure Costs by 48% with AWS Migration

The Challenge

MedTrack's on-premise infrastructure was limiting their ability to scale and innovate:

• Frequent outages: System downtime averaging 12 hours/month, risking patient care and contract penalties
• Slow deployments: 3-day deployment process requiring after-hours maintenance windows
• High infrastructure costs: $48,000/month for servers, cooling, maintenance, and IT staff
• Limited scalability: Unable to handle traffic spikes during flu season and emergencies
• Security concerns: Struggling to meet HIPAA compliance requirements
• No disaster recovery: Single data center with no backup plan
• Manual processes: Deployment, testing, and monitoring all done manually
• Developer bottlenecks: DevOps team spending 70% of time on infrastructure instead of development

The company was losing hospital contracts due to reliability issues and couldn't compete with more agile competitors. They needed modern infrastructure and DevOps practices to survive.

The Solution

Phase 1: Assessment & Planning (2 weeks)

We conducted a comprehensive infrastructure audit and migration planning:

• Documented all current infrastructure, dependencies, and workflows
• Performed cost analysis comparing on-premise vs. AWS
• Identified HIPAA compliance requirements
• Created phased migration plan to minimize risk
• Designed target AWS architecture for high availability

Phase 2: AWS Infrastructure Setup (3 weeks)

Architecture Design

• Multi-AZ deployment: Resources distributed across 3 availability zones for redundancy
• Auto-scaling infrastructure: EC2 instances with auto-scaling groups to handle traffic spikes
• Database optimization: Migrated to RDS PostgreSQL with multi-AZ replication
• CDN implementation: CloudFront for static assets and improved global performance
• Load balancing: Application Load Balancers for traffic distribution
• Security hardening: VPCs, security groups, encryption at rest and in transit

Infrastructure as Code

• Implemented Terraform for infrastructure provisioning
• Version-controlled all infrastructure configurations
• Created reusable modules for consistency
• Documented architecture and deployment procedures

Phase 3: CI/CD Pipeline Implementation (2 weeks)

Built automated deployment pipeline using modern DevOps tools:

• GitLab CI/CD: Automated build, test, and deployment workflows
• Automated testing: Unit, integration, and security testing in pipeline
• Container orchestration: Docker containers managed by ECS
• Blue-green deployments: Zero-downtime deployments with instant rollback
• Environment parity: Identical dev, staging, and production environments

Phase 4: Data Migration (3 weeks)

Carefully migrated patient data and applications:

• Started with non-critical systems to validate process
• Used AWS Database Migration Service for zero-downtime database migration
• Implemented comprehensive testing at each stage
• Maintained parallel systems during transition
• Executed final cutover during low-traffic weekend

Phase 5: Monitoring & Optimization (2 weeks)

Implemented comprehensive observability:

• Monitoring: CloudWatch for infrastructure and application monitoring
• Logging: Centralized logging with CloudWatch Logs
• Alerting: PagerDuty integration for incident management
• Performance tracking: Custom dashboards for key metrics
• Cost monitoring: AWS Cost Explorer and budget alerts

Technical Deep Dive

Infrastructure Architecture

• Compute: ECS Fargate for containerized applications (auto-scaling)
• Database: RDS PostgreSQL Multi-AZ with read replicas
• Caching: ElastiCache Redis for session management
• Storage: S3 for object storage with lifecycle policies
• CDN: CloudFront with edge locations for low latency
• Load Balancing: Application Load Balancers with health checks
• Networking: VPC with public/private subnets across 3 AZs

Security Implementation

• Encryption at rest (AES-256) for all data storage
• Encryption in transit (TLS 1.3) for all connections
• AWS KMS for key management
• IAM roles with least-privilege access
• WAF rules for application protection
• GuardDuty for threat detection
• Automated compliance audits

CI/CD Pipeline

• Code commit triggers automated builds
• Unit and integration tests run automatically
• Security scanning (SAST/DAST) in pipeline
• Automated container image building and scanning
• Blue-green deployment to production
• Automated rollback on health check failures
• Slack notifications for all deployments

Cost Breakdown

Before (On-Premise)

• Hardware: $18,000/month (servers, storage, networking)
• Data center: $12,000/month (space, cooling, power)
• IT staff: $15,000/month (dedicated infrastructure team)
• Maintenance & licenses: $3,000/month
• Total: $48,000/month

After (AWS)

• EC2/ECS: $9,500/month
• RDS: $5,200/month
• Data transfer & storage: $3,800/month
• Other services: $2,500/month
• Support: $4,000/month
• Total: $25,000/month

Annual Savings: $276,000

Key Takeaways

• Cloud migration delivers real ROI: 48% cost reduction with better performance
• Automation is essential: CI/CD eliminated manual errors and accelerated releases
• High availability is achievable: Multi-AZ architecture delivered 99.9% uptime
• DevOps empowers teams: Developers regained 70% of time previously spent on infrastructure
• Security can be baked in: Automated compliance and security reduced risk
• Scalability enables growth: Auto-scaling handled 300% traffic spikes seamlessly

Technologies & Tools Used