Executive Overview
QLogic partnered with a major federal government agency to execute a comprehensive cloud migration initiative, transitioning their critical IT infrastructure from aging on-premise data centers to AWS GovCloud. This strategic transformation addressed longstanding challenges with system reliability, scalability limitations, and escalating maintenance costs while ensuring full compliance with federal security mandates including FedRAMP High authorization requirements.
Key Results Achieved
Client Background
The federal agency manages critical citizen services and processes sensitive government data requiring the highest levels of security and compliance. Their legacy infrastructure, built over two decades, consisted of multiple data centers housing over 200 applications, 500+ servers, and petabytes of data. The aging systems experienced frequent downtime, required expensive hardware refreshes, and couldn't support the agency's digital modernization goals outlined in their IT Strategic Plan aligned with the Federal Cloud Smart Strategy.
The Challenges
The agency was struggling with outdated on-premise infrastructure that was costly to maintain and couldn't scale to meet growing demands.
- Legacy infrastructure averaging 15+ years old with increasing hardware failure rates and limited vendor support availability
- Annual maintenance costs exceeding $12 million with 30% year-over-year increases due to aging hardware and specialized expertise requirements
- Inability to scale during peak citizen service demand periods, resulting in degraded user experience and service delays
- Complex compliance requirements including FedRAMP High, FISMA, and agency-specific security controls totaling over 400 requirements
- Limited disaster recovery capabilities with recovery time objectives (RTO) exceeding 72 hours, creating significant operational risk
- Siloed systems preventing data sharing and modern analytics capabilities essential for evidence-based decision making
- Shortage of skilled personnel familiar with legacy technologies, creating knowledge concentration risks
Our Solution
We implemented a phased cloud migration strategy using AWS GovCloud, ensuring FedRAMP compliance throughout the process.
- Conducted comprehensive application portfolio assessment using the 6 Rs framework (Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor, Retire, Retain) to determine optimal migration strategy for each workload
- Designed secure landing zone architecture in AWS GovCloud with multi-account structure, network segmentation, and automated security controls aligned with federal requirements
- Implemented Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and AWS CloudFormation for consistent, repeatable, and auditable deployments
- Deployed automated CI/CD pipelines enabling secure, rapid application deployment with built-in security scanning and compliance validation
- Established 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) with real-time threat monitoring, incident response, and continuous compliance monitoring using AWS Security Hub and custom SIEM integration
- Migrated 200+ applications using proven migration factory methodology with automated testing and validation procedures
- Implemented comprehensive backup and disaster recovery with cross-region replication achieving RPO of 1 hour and RTO of 4 hours
Implementation Approach
The migration was executed over 18 months using an agile delivery approach with two-week sprints and continuous stakeholder engagement. We established a dedicated Migration Center of Excellence staffed with certified AWS architects, security specialists, and agency subject matter experts. The team utilized AWS Migration Hub for centralized tracking and AWS Application Discovery Service for automated dependency mapping. Each application wave underwent rigorous testing including functional, performance, security, and user acceptance testing before production cutover. We maintained zero unplanned downtime during the migration through careful planning, automated rollback procedures, and off-hours cutover windows.
Technologies Used
"QLogic's expertise in federal cloud migrations was instrumental to our success. They understood our compliance requirements deeply and delivered a solution that exceeded our expectations while staying within budget. The partnership approach and knowledge transfer ensured our team was fully capable of managing the new environment."
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