Client Overview
A leading global pharmaceutical company, operating across multiple continents, faced growing challenges in managing their expanding digital infrastructure. With a vast cloud footprint and high compliance requirements, they needed a scalable, secure, and cost-efficient architecture aligned with industry best practices.
Challenges
1. Cost Management
The client experienced rising cloud expenditures that were difficult to track and optimize, directly affecting their IT budgets and overall profitability.
2. Scaling Bottlenecks
Delays in scaling infrastructure, particularly in Kubernetes-based workloads, led to performance degradation and poor user experience during peak usage times.
3. Non-Compliance with Best Practices
The existing cloud architecture lacked alignment with AWS’s Well-Architected Framework, creating inefficiencies, operational risks, and potential security vulnerabilities.
Solution Overview
To address these challenges holistically, we implemented a multi-pronged strategy:
Adoption of AWS Well-Architected Framework & Control Tower
Leveraged the AWS Well-Architected Framework to align the environment with six core pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability.
Deployed AWS Control Tower to enforce centralized governance and standardized best practices across multiple accounts and regions.
Enhanced EKS Scaling with Karpenter
Integrated Amazon EKS with Karpenter, an open-source autoscaling tool, to dynamically provision EC2 instances based on real-time workloads.
Achieved a provisioning time of under 3 minutes per node, compared to the earlier 7+ minutes, dramatically improving user experience and resource elasticity.
FinOps Integration for Cost Optimization
Adopted a FinOps-driven approach to establish cost visibility, accountability, and ongoing optimization.
Integrated tools like AWS Cost Explorer and custom dashboards to continuously monitor cloud usage and spending patterns.
Architecture Highlights
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Hybrid Multi-Cloud Integration
The architecture supports a hybrid environment with AWS and Azure, allowing the client to leverage both platforms for workload distribution, high availability, and resilience.
Governance with AWS Control Tower
Centralized control over accounts, identities, and compliance via Control Tower, ensuring security and standardization across business units.
Optimized Amazon EKS Clusters
Multiple EKS clusters deployed across Availability Zones with Karpenter-based autoscaling.
Workloads are now highly elastic, with reduced infrastructure spin-up time supporting global demand surges.
Security and Compliance
Leveraged AWS services such as WAF, GuardDuty, IAM policies, and AWS Config to ensure continuous compliance with healthcare regulations and enterprise security standards.
ServiceNow Integration
Automated incident management and proactive event monitoring through ServiceNow integration streamlined operations and improved SLA compliance.
Outcomes & Business Impact
30% Reduction in Cloud Costs
Through FinOps practices, architectural refinements, and automated cost tracking, the client achieved significant savings without compromising performance or scalability.
Faster Scaling with Karpenter
Reduced EKS worker node provisioning time by over 50%, empowering the client to scale infrastructure on-demand during critical R&D phases or commercial launches.
Enterprise-Grade Security and Compliance
Strengthened security posture and reduced audit overhead by aligning with AWS compliance frameworks and implementing proactive threat detection.
