AWS Solutions Training for Partners:

Technical Foundations

Case Study Student Guide

You are the Solutions Architect from PartnerTech LLC. You are meeting at Customer
Satisfaction, Inc. with:

 Arnie Jones – VP of Operations

 Lance Ruiz – Director of IT Finance
 Jai Gupta - Director of Product Engineering

The Sales rep and SE from your team at PartnerTech have already met with members of Jai’s
staff, and have put together a package of discovery information for you. That package, plus the
results of your Linkedin and other public research, are summarized below.

At today’s meeting, you will present a preliminary architecture solution. Your goal is to get CSI
to approve that solution, which will serve as a foundation for future AWS Cloud adoption at CSI.

While preparing for your presentation, you will get 5-10 minutes of Q&A with Arnie, Lance
and/or Jai. These questions should stem from and expand upon the existing information.

Discovery Results

Summary
Customer Service International (CSI) is a publically-traded company offering a variety of services
to customers in the United States. With 5,000 employees across several divisions, CSI has been
a leader in its space since its inception in 1993. CSI’s patented technology has offered
customers differentiated value through the years, allowing the business to achieve a customer
base of 10,000,000 unique users.

Originally, CSI customers had to install software applications on the servers in their data centers
to use CSI technology. However, with the advent of ubiquitous, broadband internet access, CSI
abandoned that delivery model and made its applications available as an online service. They
established their online presence 12 years ago, and haven’t updated it since.

Customer Experience
CSI customers pay a subscription fee to access its services. The subscription period has several
options: Per-Use, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Customers must register with CSI to create an
account and purchase a subscription.
 AWS Solutions Training for Partners:
Technical Foundations

Case Study Student Guide

CSI collects the following information:

 Customer Name
 Customer Organization
 Username
 Password
 Address
 Phone Number
 Email Address
 Payment Method
 Subscribed Services
 Subscription Period

This data is used to create a unique user account. The data is written to a database when the
account is created, and updated infrequently. The frequency with which the data is read from
the database depends on the type of subscription the user has. Most user data is accessed a
few times a day. User data is sensitive, and as a result, is encrypted to ensure its security.

Infrastructure
CSI services are hosted in a single data center that is located in the central United States. Each
division of CSI manages the infrastructure needed to develop, support, and deliver that
division’s services. Any updates a division needs to make must be approved by the Change
Committee, and scheduled during a common change window.

The corporate IT group is responsible for procuring all hardware and software needed by the
divisions. Service updates sometimes result in downtime of varying lengths, during which some
services are unavailable to CSI’s customers.

The Persona application

Users must authenticate to a CSI web portal using a login and password before accessing the
services included with their subscription. After authenticating, the portal issues a service access
token that is stored on the device from which the user accessed the portal.

While each division maintains its own service delivery infrastructure, CSI relies on a homegrown
web application called “Persona,” built and managed by CSI corporate IT, to control user access.
All divisions use Persona as the gatekeeper for their services. If Persona is unavailable,
customers cannot access any CSI services.
 AWS Solutions Training for Partners:
Technical Foundations

Case Study Student Guide

Persona Architecture
The Persona web portal is a three-tier web application hosted on dedicated servers in the CSI
central data center. Here are the details of the architecture:

 The servers in the data center run VMware ESXi virtualization software.
 The Persona web server and middleware components use IBM WebSphere running on
RedHat Enterprise Linux virtual machines.
 The application itself is written in Oracle Java, and uses web technologies such as HTML,
CSS, and CGI.
 The Persona database relies on Oracles RAC 10.2.0.5 running on physical hosts.
 The entire application is protected by a pair of firewalls behind a pair of F5 load
balancers.

CSI stores customer activity for seven years to meet regulatory compliance requirements. CSI
would like to make use this customer activity data for BI purposes, but has not done so yet.

Availability Issues
On two occasions in the past year, the Persona service has experienced service outages. One of
the outages was attributed to a hardware failure. The other was caused by human error. In
both cases, CSI was forced to issue a public apology and compensate customers for the
inconvenience.
 AWS Solutions Training for Partners:
Technical Foundations

Case Study Student Guide

Cost Issues
The cost of operating Persona has increased substantially. The hardware that hosts the
database and virtualization platform is reaching EOL, and software licensing costs are also
increasing. CSI is reaching the end of its contract with its current collocation provider, and is
looking for ways to decrease its real estate costs.
The hardware and software procurement processes at CSI are lengthy, complicated, and
cumbersome. Once procured, deployment often takes weeks or months. Change windows also
lead to service disruptions for customers.
Persona was “state-of-the-art” when it was developed. Designed to support customers
connecting from personal computers, the Persona portal is not friendly to mobile computing
devices. Additionally, Persona is not capable of supporting automated service access.

Competitive Issues
CSI’s market dominance is under threat from a competitor: International Customer Satisfaction,
Inc. (ICS).
ICS entered the market five years ago offering services similar to CSI’s, but at a lower price.
Making matters worse, ICS has been able to expand and enhance its portfolio of services. ICS is
offering customers more usage options, and personalization that adjusts service behavior to
reflect the needs of each customer.

ICS has also been able to establish a presence in the Americas, Europe and Asia. As a result, ICS
has been taking market share from CSI in the United States. CSI must modernize or face
obsolescence.

Project: ShapeShift
CSI management has committed to an aggressive modernization program that they are calling
Project: ShapeShift. This program is scheduled to launch in six months. Every aspect of CSI
operations is under review. Goals include:

• Expanding CSI’s service portfolio

• Reimagining CSI’s product development processes to support rapid product innovation
• Enhancing the experience of every CSI customer
• Improving operational efficiency and service availability while lowering costs
• Providing CSI with a global market platform
 AWS Solutions Training for Partners:
Technical Foundations

Case Study Student Guide

Challenges
With CSI’s entry into the global market, CSI’s customer base is expected to grow. Internal
business analysts estimate that the user base is likely to exceed 50,000,000 within two years.

Persona, in its current form, cannot support this increase. Scalability testing of the Persona
database platform has confirmed that it can support no more than 30,000,000 users.

CSI’s CIO has been considering a move to AWS. However, he and his team aren’t sure they’re
ready. While the IT team would like to adopt an “AWS First” strategy, they are concerned that
the current operations team does not have the cloud skills necessary to support that approach..

A few CSI engineers have been using AWS resources to develop and test applications. However,
CSI has not placed any production workloads in the cloud. Some current stakeholders are
heavily invested in maintaining the current technology.

Project: ShapeShift is schedule for release in just six months, and Persona must be ready for the
launch.