Success Story

Leveraging AWS Lambda to accelerate the product release cycle for a telehealth services provider in the UK

Services Used:

AWS Consulting
AWS Lambda Solutions
DevOps Services

About the client

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Headquartered in London, the client is a leading healthcare provider specializing in personalized care and planning solutions designed for cancer survivors. Through its one-of-a-kind mHealth app, the client offers personalized expertise from cancer dieticians, physiotherapists, psychologists, and specialized nurses. The client helps cancer survivors to assess & track their state of health through a starter health kit, and the data received through it further helps in doctor-patient consultation.

  • 20% increase in deployment frequency
  • 5% change failure rate
  • 30 mins avg MTTR

Business Situation

The client, seeking to establish a quick and seamless release cycle for their application updates, encountered numerous challenges in their in-house DevOps practice that hindered their capacity for rapid product development.

Their automation cycle was fraught with issues, such as the complexity of branch management due to the project’s multi-branch approach not being adequately supported by AWS infrastructure. This resulted in the development team having to manually update branch names within AWS CodePipeline for each new release, slowing down development.

Additionally, the manual invalidation of the Cloudfront cache with each new deployment added unnecessary complexity, causing frequent downtime and production issues. These challenges, coupled with operational efficiency gaps, significantly impacted the client’s ability to manage their infrastructure optimally.

Major challenges faced by the client were:

  • The multi-branch approach of the project was not adequately supported by AWS infrastructure, thus the development team had to manually update the branch name in the AWS CodePipeline.
  • The need to manually invalidate the Cloudfront cache with each new deployment added unnecessary complexity and led to frequent downtime and production issues.
  • Delays in identifying issues or performing root cause analysis due to insufficient evidence and data.
  • Manual provisioning of the infrastructure led to inefficiencies and suboptimal infrastructure management.

The Solution

To resolve the DevOps automation challenges, Daffodil’s expert team harnessed the power of AWS Lambda, an event-driven, serverless computing platform tailored for cloud applications.

 

1. Automating branch updation in CI/CD Pipeline

To tackle the manual branch update issue within the CI/CD pipeline, a Lambda function played a pivotal role. Whenever a new branch was created within AWS CodeCommit, a Cloudwatch events-triggered Lambda function swung into action. This dynamic Lambda function orchestrated the deployment of a CloudFormation stack, which in turn generated new pipelines on the spot for each new release.

 

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2. Enhanced Monitoring and Alerting with AWS CloudWatch

As part of the partner solution, a robust system for monitoring, logging, and alerting was meticulously implemented using AWS CloudWatch. This comprehensive approach ensured:

  • Thorough Metrics and Dashboards
  • Efficient Log Management
  • Proactive Alarm System
  • Activity Tracking with CloudTrail

This integration of AWS CloudWatch and CloudTrail significantly improved the overall RCA experience, reduced debugging time, and ensured rapid response and resolution of any issues or incidents, ultimately enhancing the reliability and performance of the entire system.

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3. Ensuring Security & Cost Optimized Implementations

In the pursuit of implementing a robust solution, Daffodil prioritized two fundamental pillars: Security and Cost Optimization. These aspects were woven into every facet of the project to ensure a seamless and secure operational environment.

 

  • Security Best Practices:
    Daffodil diligently adhered to industry-leading security best practices. This included the incorporation of AWS Secrets Manager for efficient secret management and the utilization of AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for robust data encryption throughout the project.

 

  • Cost-Effective Solutions:
    To prevent cost escalation, the team made calculated trade-off decisions and optimized workloads. This approach not only ensured quality work but also strategically managed costs, resulting in an efficient and budget-friendly operation for the client.
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4. AWS Services in the Solution:

The solution harnessed the power of several AWS services, each playing a crucial role in the project’s success:

  • Lambda: Leveraged for serverless compute power, ensuring efficient and responsive execution of tasks.
  • AWS CodePipeline: Orchestrated the continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, streamlining the development and deployment process.
  • CloudWatch: Acted as the vigilant sentinel, monitoring and managing the system’s health and performance in real-time.
  • Cloudfront: Powered content delivery and ensured low-latency, high-speed data access.
  • CloudFormation: Streamlined infrastructure management and provisioning, enhancing efficiency and scalability.
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The Impact

Through the strategic implementation of AWS Lambda functions, the London-based healthcare provider overcame key challenges in their DevOps automation cycle. This resulted in a remarkable 20% increase in deployment speed, empowering the organization to deliver updates and features swiftly. Furthermore, leveraging AWS Lambda's "pay only for what you use" model optimized costs for the client. Most notably, it significantly boosted the client’s developer and DevOps team productivity, allowing them to focus on strategic tasks and innovation.

  • 20% increase in deployment frequency
  • 5% change failure rate
  • 30 mins avg MTTR

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