Accelerating Modernization on AWS with Accenture’s Enterprise Modernization GPS

This post is co-written with Dylan Snow, Associate Principal Engineer at Accenture.

Introduction

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, for organizations wishing to increase innovation, move faster, and increase efficiency, legacy systems and technical debt have become significant barriers. While many customers have made the initial move to the cloud through “lift and shift” migrations, this approach should be seen as the first step to achieving the full potential of cloud computing. According to a recent Accenture study, only 40 percent of companies report achieving the expected cloud benefits.

To remain competitive and optimize technology costs, enterprises should take a strategic and comprehensive approach to modernization. This is where the power of Accenture’s Enterprise Modernization GPS comes into play.

Accenture is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and Managed Services Provider (MSP) that offers comprehensive solutions to migrate and manage operations on AWS.

Accenture has collaborated with AWS to develop a comprehensive, data-driven methodology to guide enterprises on their modernization journeys. Leveraging Accenture’s Enterprise Modernization GPS tool, AWS customers can assess the maturity of their technology estates. The tool will identify high-impact modernization opportunities, and chart a clear path forward aligned with AWS recommended modernization strategies.

This blog post will explore the key components of Accenture’s Enterprise Modernization GPS tool built by the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG). We will demonstrate how this powerful tool can help enterprises unlock the full transformative potential of the cloud and position themselves for success in the digital era.

Enterprise Modernization

Modernization is the process of transforming traditional applications and infrastructure to leverage cloud-native services like those offered by AWS. This unlocks new business capabilities, accelerates innovation, and reduces technical debt.

AWS has identified six major modernization pathways to guide customers on their transformation journeys:

• Move to Cloud Native – Decomposing monolithic applications into microservices to reduce technical debt, increase agility, speed, and operational efficiency with serverless computing.
• Move to Containers – Deploy applications rapidly, scale to meet the business needs, run as resource-isolated processes, ensuring quick, reliable, and consistent deployments, regardless of environment
• Move to Open Source – Remove the taxation on innovation by moving from commercial licensing to open-source solutions such as Windows to Linux or MS SQL Server and Oracle to PostgreSQL.
• Move to Managed Databases – Remove the operational burden and complexity of managing databases by moving to fully managed, cloud-native, or purpose-built databases.
• Move to Managed Analytics – Move to managed modern analytics and data lakes on AWS.
• Move to Modern DevOps – Move faster with automated CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and test-driven development.

These pathways provide a clear roadmap for enterprises looking to transform their technology foundations. However, navigating the abundance of options and determining the right path forward can still be a daunting challenge. This is where the Accenture’s Enterprise Modernization GPS will help. It is a powerful tool designed to lead organizations towards a deeper, more strategic embrace of cloud computing and a comprehensive, data-driven modernization journey.

What is Enterprise Modernization GPS?

The Enterprise Modernization GPS is a serverless evaluation tool that uses customers’ AWS console data to analyze the state of their AWS Cloud modernity. It provides a suite of features that provide customers with a structured approach to assessing their current state, identifying high-impact modernization opportunities, and charting a clear path forward.

1. Modernization Index – At the heart of the Enterprise Modernization GPS is the Modernization Index, a data-driven metric that measures the agility and adaptability of an organization’s technical estate. The Modernization Index is derived from insights gathered across 50+ proof points on the AWS cloud. The Modernization Index serves as a directional compass, allowing enterprises to benchmark their progress against industry peers and ensure they are keeping pace with the rapid evolution of technology. Modernization Index is aligned with AWS Cloud Value Framework.
2. Modernization Metrics – Complementing the Modernization Index are the Modernization Metrics. This is a suite of quantifiable indicators that provides deep visibility into the cost efficiency, business agility, staff productivity, and operational resilience of the customer’s technology estate. These metrics offer a granular view of the your current state, surfacing areas of strength as well as opportunities for improvement.
3. Modernization Priorities and Investment Opportunities – By analyzing your AWS environment and benchmarking against industry standards, the Enterprise Modernization GPS identifies a list of Priorities and Investment Opportunities. These insights translate technical considerations into tangible business value propositions, empowering you to make informed decisions on identified modernization initiatives.
4. Modernization Roadmap – The final key component of the Enterprise Modernization GPS is the roadmap, a visual representation of prioritized modernization opportunities within your AWS environment. This roadmap helps you understand the impact of different modernization approaches. It facilitates a shared understanding of priorities and provides a structured way to navigate transformation, mitigating risk and accelerating time to value.

Shown below is an image of the Enterprise Modernization GPS dashboard, which shows you the Modernization Index, Modernization Opportunities and the Roadmap for these opportunities.

Figure 1 – The Enterprise Modernization GPS Dashboard

Enterprise Modernization GPS Design

The Enterprise Modernization GPS tool is a fully serverless AWS native application. Enterprise Modernization GPS works by gathering AWS service usage data from your AWS account(s) and analyzing that data to derive the Modernization Index and Modernization Pathway recommendations.

The Enterprise Modernization GPS has two main parts

1. A full featured front-end dashboard.
2. A Metrics Gathering Agent (MGA) that deploys to your AWS Organization to gather metrics.

Figure 2 – High Level Diagram of The Enterprise Modernization GPS Deployment

Deploying the Metrics Gathering Agent (MGA)

1. Sign up for a new account for the Enterprise Modernization GPS tool and gain access to the MGA backend code through an AWS Marketplace hyperlink. Subscribed customers will receive a how-to guide for performing the following steps.
2. Deploy MGA to your AWS Organization, specifying which AWS Organizational Units and AWS Account IDs you are interested in gathering modernization information.
3. Once deployed, return to the Enterprise Modernization GPS tool website frontend and wait for the MGA (time depends on the number of services deployed in the account) to finish gathering metrics and calculating your Modernization Opportunities, Current Estate, and Modernization Index.
4. Obtain a holistic, executive-level summary of the level of modernization in your AWS Organization.
   1. Build a roadmap by viewing, filtering, sorting, and selecting your most applicable Modernization Opportunities.
5. (Optionally) You can choose to share anonymized metrics data for Industry lens analysis

The MGA is not expected to have any impact on the production workloads.

The Enterprise Modernization GPS Architecture 

This architecture demonstrates a modern, serverless approach to frontend and backend integration, with a focus on security, scalability, and advanced data processing capabilities.

Frontend Architecture

The following diagram shows the architecture of Enterprise Modernization GPS frontend.

Figure 3 – Frontend Architecture

Frontend: This is where the client interacts with Enterprise Modernization GPS tool.

1. Hosting and Deployment: The frontend of the Enterprise Modernization GPS tool is hosted on AWS Amplify in Accenture’s AWS account, providing a scalable web application hosting service.
2. User Authentication: User authentication is managed through Amazon Cognito User Pools, providing secure and scalable user sign-up, sign-in, and access control.
3. API Management and Security: User requests are routed through Amazon API Gateway, to the backend lambda functions. NAT Gateway is used for static IP address which is whitelisted at AWS WAF in the backend (backend architecture is explained in next section)
4. Serverless Backend Processing: Multiple AWS Lambda functions handle various operations, including:
   1. Adding metrics
   2. Checking queue status
   3. Managing opportunities
5. Metrics Gathering Agent: Access to the Metrics Gathering Agent code is provided through an AWS Marketplace hyperlink, allowing you to easily deploy the necessary data gathering tools.
6. Industry Data storage and visualization: Anonymized industry lens data, shared by consenting customers, is stored in Amazon DynamoDB. This data is made available for viewing on the frontend, providing valuable industry insights.
7. Generative AI-Powered Opportunity Prioritization: The system leverages Amazon Bedrock with Claude 3.5 Sonnet to prioritize opportunities. This integration of advanced AI capabilities enhances the tool’s ability to provide targeted modernization recommendations.

Backend – Metrics Gathering Agent (MGA)

Following diagram shows the architecture of Enterprise Modernization GPS Backend.

Figure 4 – Backend & MGA Deployment Architecture

1. Configuration and Deployment: A CloudFormation StackSet is used to manage the deployment of metrics gathering infrastructure across your Management and Target AWS Accounts.
2. Data Access: An Amazon AppSync API endpoint is implemented in each Client Target Account to provide GraphQL-based access to customer metrics.
3. Metric Collection: Multiple Lambda functions are deployed to gather metrics across AWS services, accounts, and regions. This includes functions “Get All Service Metrics Lambda”, “Add Traditional Services Lambda”, and “Add Modern Services Lambda”.
4. Data Storage: Amazon DynamoDB tables are used to store various types of metrics. Amazon SQS queues are utilized to appropriately throttle and distribute metric gathering requests.
5. Metric Types and Processing: The system handles Amazon CloudWatch metrics, including traditional and modern services, opportunities, and AWS service metrics. Lambda functions are used to process and transform these metrics before storage.
6. Cross-Account Resource Sharing:Results are aggregated and returned through the AppSync endpoints. The architecture implements a resource sharing model where the Source AppSync API from each Client Target Account is shared with the Client Management Account using AWS Resource Access Manager In the Management Account, these shared resources are consolidated into a Merged AppSync Endpoint, providing centralized access and management of data from multiple client accounts.
7. Security and Access Control: The architecture incorporates roles “Custom StackSet Administration Role” and “AppSync Service Role”, for a robust security model with granular access controls across the multi-account structure.

Security

The Enterprise Modernization GPS follows the AWS Serverless Whitepaper architecture recommendations and leverages AWS recommended security best practices.

Data Collection

The code that gathers the metrics is available through AWS Marketplace, and is only accessible to customers who complete the sign-up process. The data collected includes only CloudWatch metrics, retrieved from your AWS Organization. The data collected is only about AWS services currently in use and performance metrics for those services, and does not contain any customer-specific PII, account, billing information, or any other customer data. Details about data collected will be available in Getting started guide from Marketplace. The code that gathers the data is well-architected, readable, and free to deploy, with a low cost of operation.

Data Storage and Processing

The metrics gathered are accessible through a single externally facing AppSync API endpoint that you authorize the front-end to access by providing the AppSync API key which is created at the time of MGA deployment, minimizing the attack surface. The back-end architecture utilizes AWS services such as CloudFormation, Lambda, DynamoDB, and AppSync to securely store and process the customer data. Updating or deleting the MGA back-end is a well-documented process, and is available to authorized users who have completed the sign-up process. The CloudWatch Metrics data used for analysis is encrypted at rest in your AWS accounts and is not stored in Accenture’s AWS accounts. The exception is the anonymized modernization index, customers’ industry and on-boarding question answers which are saved anonymously from consenting customers to a global industry lens table.

Access and Permissions

The Enterprise Modernization GPS front-end dashboard is accessed through a sign-up and authentication process using Amazon Cognito. The dashboard and API access are controlled and restricted to authorized users within the customer’s organization. You retain full control and ownership of your data, with the Enterprise Modernization GPS tool only accessing the required metrics through the authorized IAM role.

Cleaning Up

To remove the MGA, use the provided command-line convenience script or the AWS Console directly to remove all deployed resources.

Conclusion

The Enterprise Modernization GPS tool provides a structured, data-driven approach to help you assess your current technology state. This will identify modernization opportunities, and chart a clear path forward aligned with AWS recommended modernization strategies. In this blog we have shown you how you can use Enterprise Modernization GPS to identify the modernization pathways based on your existing usage of AWS services. We also learned about the technical architecture of Enterprise Modernization GPS and the security aspects of it.

Accenture and AWS have worked together for more than a decade to help organizations realize value from their applications and data. The collaboration between the two companies, the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG), enables enterprises to accelerate their pace of digital innovation and realize incremental business value from cloud adoption and transformation.

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