Client Overview:
American Century Investments (ACI) is an international asset management firm that needed to modernize its legacy infrastructure to stay competitive in the fast-paced financial services industry.
Challenge:
ACI faced scalability, agility, and operational efficiency challenges due to a large, monolithic Java-based legacy application running in an on-premise data center. They needed a transformation strategy that would support growth, increase efficiency, and introduce a modern UI.
Solution:
Keyhole Software led a comprehensive strategic modernization initiative to transition ACI’s legacy application to a cloud-native microservices architecture. This transformation included refactoring the application into containerized microservices, deploying them on AWS using Kubernetes and OpenShift, and upgrading the user experience with a modern React-based UI.
Project Execution:
- Legacy Migration: The Keyhole team successfully migrated the monolithic Java application into a microservice-based architecture. This process involved carefully containerizing services and orchestrating them using Kubernetes on the AWS Cloud.
- DevOps & Automation: Keyhole helped establish CI/CD pipelines for smooth development cycles, enabling hybrid cloud automation with OpenShift. This approach improved deployment efficiency and streamlined the development process.
- User Experience Upgrade: To enhance user engagement, a modern React SPA UI was developed, leveraging Adobe Experience Manager for component-based UI design. This new design increased flexibility and reusability across future projects.
Development Approach:
Keyhole employed an iterative migration strategy, minimizing disruption while ensuring continuous feature delivery.
Sprint 0 included an initial month, which was used to establish user story backlog, environment, and Microservice platforms (CI/CD) for Development and QA (Production was established later in the project cycle). The Keyhole Tech Lead and Sr. Developer performed these tasks prior to scaling the team up for the main development effort. The goal of Sprint 0 was to utilize the OpenShift platform in order to expedite delivery. Service boundaries were determined from the existing web application.
Three-week development sprints followed after, and the team began to scale. Developer and QA resources were aligned according to ACI’s desired velocity. This team consisted of a mix of Keyhole consultants and internal ACI personnel to ensure knowledge transfer for long-term support and ownership.
These sprints aimed to incrementally develop the microservices architecture of the Java application and implement the necessary features as quickly as possible, moving the migration along at ACI’s desired pace. At the end of each sprint, the developed software was demoed, and the next sprint’s user stories were planned or confirmed.
DevOps Culture
Leading the microservice migration for the Java monolith involved more than just development; it also required a great deal of leadership. With the goal of cultivating a DevOps culture, the team’s effort centered around developing a more agile environment. This included processes, practices, and technology choices.
Key Technologies:
- Java
- Microservices Architecture
- Kubernetes & OpenShift
- AWS Cloud
- React & Adobe Experience Manager
- Spring Boot
- Cypress & DevOps
For the migration, the Keyhole team extensively utilized technologies such as Microservices Architecture, Java EE, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Spring Boot, AWS Cloud, React, Cypress, and DevOps, Pivotal, and Spring/Netflix OSS to complete the project.
The Keyhole consultants worked to prototype and implement an application build process for React to leverage the components within Adobe Experience Manager. This allowed the publishing of components for use across the organization.
Cypress was utilized for the application testing and the creation of test harnesses for QA. A component library was created in combination with Storybook to establish a foundation of useful UI features that can be utilized in all of ACI’s future projects.
Results:
This modernization effort resulted in a scalable, agile cloud-native application that is easier to manage, deploy, and update. The introduction of DevOps practices and automated pipelines increased deployment speed and reduced operational overhead. Additionally, the React SPA UI provided a more engaging and user-friendly interface.
Conclusion:
The successful migration of ACI’s monolithic application to a cloud-native microservices architecture has positioned the organization for long-term scalability and innovation. The Keyhole team’s expertise in cloud technology and microservices migration has enabled ACI to stay competitive while offering improved performance and user experience.
Technologies: Java, Microservices, Kubernetes, OpenShift, AWS, React, Cypress, DevOps, Spring Boot
Learn More:
Explore how Keyhole Software can help your organization embrace digital transformation with microservices and cloud-native architectures. Contact us to discuss your project today!
