In today’s rapidly evolving digital education landscape, scalability and performance are paramount. For Let’s Go Learn, a leading e-learning platform, the surge in demand highlighted the limitations of their on-premises infrastructure. To overcome these challenges and modernize their platform, Let’s Go Learn partnered with Mission, a trusted Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Consulting Partner, to orchestrate a seamless migration to the cloud. This strategic move not only streamlined operations but also unlocked significant improvements in performance, scalability, and cost efficiency, setting the stage for future innovation and growth for Let’s Go Learn.
The Challenge: Scaling for Exploding Demand and Modernizing Legacy Systems
The year 2020 brought unprecedented changes, and for Let’s Go Learn, it meant an exponential increase in the demand for their e-learning platform. Their existing colocation data center infrastructure, while functional, was proving to be a bottleneck. Allan Heaton, Director of Engineering at Let’s Go Learn, recognized the urgent need for a more agile and scalable solution. Migrating to the cloud was not just about keeping up with demand; it was about future-proofing their platform.
One of the key drivers for cloud migration was the desire to leverage big data analytics. Let’s Go Learn’s educational partners, primarily school districts, rely heavily on data-driven insights to understand learning trends and refine their teaching methodologies. Building a robust big data analytics service in-house would be resource-intensive and time-consuming. Therefore, accessing a ready-made, scalable analytics service offered by a cloud provider became a crucial objective.
Furthermore, Let’s Go Learn aimed to enhance its DevOps capabilities. Provisioning dedicated environments for large school districts was a complex and time-consuming process in their colocation setup. Containerization and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) were identified as essential technologies to streamline environment creation and management, ensuring dedicated resources and improved performance for each client.
“We reached a point where the colocation model limited our ability to scale our services to meet the increased demand. We also wanted to modernize our monolithic applications, and the flexibility of the cloud made it the next logical step for our growth.” Allan Heaton Director of Engineering
The internal software development team was also burdened with managing the physical IT infrastructure, diverting their focus from core application development. A cloud migration, coupled with managed services, would free up their team to concentrate on innovation and platform enhancements for Let’s Go Learn’s users.
Why AWS: A User-Friendly and Robust Cloud Platform for E-Learning
Let’s Go Learn carefully evaluated several cloud platforms, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. AWS emerged as the clear frontrunner due to its user-friendliness, intuitive interface, and robust security features, particularly in identity access management.
“AWS also provides a larger cloud footprint with data centers across the U.S.,” Heaton adds. “That means students and teachers can experience fast application performance no matter where they log in from. We also have schools in Asia using our platform, so we can take advantage of the AWS global presence. We can use the infrastructure-as-code approach in AWS to quickly spin up environments in another region.”
AWS’s extensive global infrastructure, with data centers strategically located worldwide, was another significant advantage. This global reach ensures low latency and optimal performance for Let’s Go Learn’s users, regardless of their geographical location – crucial for a platform serving schools across the US and Asia. The promise of Infrastructure as Code within AWS further solidified its appeal, offering the agility to quickly deploy and manage environments in different regions.
Why Mission: DevOps Expertise and Seamless Cloud Migration Partner
With AWS chosen as the cloud platform, Let’s Go Learn sought a partner with proven expertise in cloud migration, DevOps, and managed services. Recommendations from AWS and industry peers led them to Mission. Mission’s reputation as a leading AWS Premier Consulting Partner, combined with their deep DevOps knowledge, made them an ideal choice.
“Mission impressed us with their experience in DevOps, which is always a challenge unless you hire someone as an internal resource. Collaborating with a skilled DevOps team like Mission helped us move forward with our migration, knowing we would have help with the nuances of our application environment. Migrating and upgrading can be painful, but we were able to achieve these with the Mission Cloud Elevate team by our side.” Allan Heaton Director of Engineering
Strategy and Solution: Containerization, Managed Database, and Performance Optimization
Mission’s strategy for Let’s Go Learn’s cloud migration centered around building a containerized infrastructure within Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). This strategic decision enabled Let’s Go Learn to embark on their journey of transforming monolithic applications into modern, agile microservices. Mission adopted a phased approach, starting with a staging cluster for rigorous testing, followed by comprehensive QA, and finally, the deployment to a mirrored production environment. Let’s Go Learn now benefits from two staging environments for ongoing development alongside their production setup.
To further optimize performance and reduce operational overhead, Mission implemented Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, a serverless managed database solution. This eliminated the need for Let’s Go Learn to dedicate internal resources to database maintenance, allowing them to focus on their core competencies. Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN), was deployed to cache application images, significantly improving web page load times and enhancing user experience.
Mission Cloud Elevate played a crucial role in streamlining code deployments. Utilizing tools like AWS CodePipeline, Mission empowered Let’s Go Learn to execute blue-green deployments seamlessly, even during business hours, without any platform downtime. Mission Cloud One provided continuous monitoring of the AWS environment’s performance, ensuring optimal uptime and responsiveness. Furthermore, Mission Cloud Foundation focused on cost optimization, ensuring Let’s Go Learn’s cloud infrastructure remained efficient and cost-effective.
The migration process itself was meticulously planned and executed. Mission provided comprehensive documentation, including URL verification procedures, and allocated standby resources to ensure a smooth cutover. The migration was strategically scheduled during a low-activity summer weekend, resulting in a transparent and seamless transition for Let’s Go Learn’s users.
Results and Benefits: Enhanced Performance, Scalability, and Cost Savings
The results of the AWS migration, orchestrated by Mission, were immediate and impactful. Let’s Go Learn experienced no latency complaints post-migration, and the intermittent routing issues that plagued their colocation environment vanished entirely.
Database response times witnessed a dramatic improvement, plummeting from seconds to milliseconds, thanks to the optimized AWS infrastructure and the transparency provided by Mission Cloud One and New Relic integration. Web page load times also significantly improved due to image caching via Amazon CloudFront and the dedicated virtual private cloud environment, eliminating resource contention issues.
“Following the migration, we had no complaints of latency,” says Heaton. “And the intermittent routing issues we experienced in the colocation data center went away.”
Beyond performance enhancements, Let’s Go Learn benefited from streamlined code deployments and on-demand scalability. The seamless update process, crucial for their bi-weekly code releases, became a reality. Scaling compute resources up or down became effortless, ensuring the platform could handle fluctuating demands without downtime.
Mission’s cost optimization efforts, leveraging Mission Cloud Foundation, are projected to yield significant savings. By right-sizing and auto-scaling compute resources based on performance data, Let’s Go Learn anticipates a 25-30% reduction in overall infrastructure costs. This proactive approach to cost management contrasts sharply with their previous reactive upgrades in the colocation environment, which often led to increased expenses.
Most importantly, the AWS migration, facilitated by Mission, has paved the way for Let’s Go Learn to realize their vision of a microservices architecture. The containerized environment empowers their development team to update applications more efficiently and roll out new services faster, ultimately enhancing the learning experience for students worldwide.
Next Steps: Embracing Serverless and Continuous Optimization
Looking ahead, Let’s Go Learn will continue to partner with Mission for ongoing DevOps management, performance monitoring, and cost optimization. The next strategic step is to evolve their AWS environment towards a serverless architecture.
“Our first goal was to migrate to AWS, which we accomplished, and now we can focus on tuning. Mission has set the stage so that when we are ready to go serverless, we’ll be able to. This will provide us the opportunity to leverage the Amazon API gateway combined with AWS Lambda functions that will automate the data analysis that the school districts require.” Allan Heaton Director of Engineering
This transition to serverless, leveraging services like Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda, will further automate data analysis for school districts, providing even more valuable insights and empowering educators. Let’s Go Learn appreciates the fresh perspective and expertise Mission brings, ensuring they remain at the forefront of technology and continue to deliver an exceptional e-learning experience. With Mission as their trusted partner, Let’s Go Learn is confident in the efficiency, performance, and scalability of their platform, enabling them to focus on their core mission: improving learning outcomes for students globally.
AWS Services
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Amazon CloudFront
- AWS CodePipeline
- Amazon API Gateway
- AWS Lambda
Third-Party Integrations
- New Relic
- GitHub
- CodeShip
- Ghost Inspector
