Modernized an ed-tech leader to scale operations and strengthen security with AWS cloud infrastructure

Legacy school management systems are increasingly unable to meet the performance, scalability, and security demands of today’s educational environments. As institutions face growing pressure to streamline operations—ranging from student attendance and dismissal to visitor tracking and emergency response—traditional on-premise solutions fall short of enabling real-time responsiveness and centralized control. 

However, a cloud-native architecture offers a scalable, secure, and automated foundation to modernize these mission-critical workflows, empowering schools to operate more efficiently and with greater confidence.

Customer overview

Our customer, a trusted partner to schools across the U.S., provides an integrated platform to help educational institutions manage student dismissal, visitor check-ins, emergency alerts, volunteer tracking, and more. By digitizing front-desk tasks and offering real-time visibility, they empower schools to run smoothly while keeping staff, students, and families informed.

Challenges | Scaling and security concerns with legacy systems

The platform as originally launched in 2015 was running on a legacy on-premise system. It relied on manual updates, had slow processing times, and lacked centralized monitoring and automated alerting, which made it difficult to scale or respond quickly to growing needs.

With limited cloud expertise, administrators found it challenging to manage key processes, such as backup strategies, formal disaster recovery and resource utilization. The real issue wasn’t just handling the data—it was ensuring it could be processed quickly enough to meet the fast-paced demands of the school environment.

• Manual and slow updates: Updates were done manually, leading to delays and errors.
• Lack of centralized monitoring: Without a unified system, it was challenging to track activities and address issues promptly.
• Security gaps: Inconsistent security practices left parts of the platform vulnerable.
• Limited cloud expertise: Administrators found it difficult to manage backup strategies, disaster recovery, and resource utilization effectively.

Solution | Modernized ed-tech platform by rehosting applications to AWS

Built on AWS, the solution transforms the K–12 operations system by migrating its infrastructure to a more secure, scalable, and automated environment. This migration leverages AWS best practices to ensure high availability, improved performance, and robust security across the platform.

With AWS infrastructure in place, the team streamlined the deployment of key applications and optimized backend services for better performance and future scalability. The result is a more responsive, reliable system that is easier to manage and scale as new schools are onboarded.

Cloud-optimized infrastructure powered by AWS

We migrated the customer’s platform to AWS, transforming their operations with a more secure, scalable, and automated infrastructure. The solution utilized AWS best practices to ensure high availability, improved performance, and robust security across the system.

Key components of the migration included:

• Cloud-optimized infrastructure: A secure, scalable environment using Amazon VPC with multi-AZ subnets for high availability and fault tolerance.
• Fault-tolerant application deployment: Deployed WordPress and React JS apps on Amazon EC2 with NGINX and Apache, using Auto Scaling and Application Load Balancer (ALB) for effective load balancing.
• Seamless data migration: Migrated MySQL data to Amazon RDS (Multi-AZ) with automated snapshots to ensure zero data loss and maintain data integrity.
• Proactive monitoring: Implemented CloudWatch Dashboards and Alarms for continuous monitoring of EC2, EKS, and RDS with real-time alerts for system issues.
• Secure and compliant deployment: Configured AWS IAM, Security Groups, and KMS for encrypted data storage, ensuring compliance with educational data regulations.

Success metrics

By migrating to AWS, we helped transform school operations, ensuring faster, more efficient, and secure management of critical tasks. The migration resulted in significant improvements across multiple key areas, demonstrating the impact of moving to a cloud-first infrastructure.

• 100% system functionality post-migration with zero downtime during the process.
• Zero data loss during the migration, ensuring complete data integrity and consistency.
• Zero service disruption post-migration, providing a seamless end-user experience.
• 100% security compliance, safeguarding sensitive student data across the platform.