A community credit union’s path from VMware outages to cloud resilience

For 70 years, Carter Credit Union has served communities across northwest Louisiana and beyond. What started in 1954 as a small financial cooperative for International Paper company employees in Springhill, Louisiana, has grown into a $770 million institution serving more than 45,000 members across 13 locations. For many of those members, particularly in rural and underserved areas, Carter represents their primary access point to mainstream financial services, financial education, and the economic stability that comes with belonging to a trusted institution.

But behind that growth was an aging technology infrastructure that put member services at risk. In 2022, Carter’s IT team began migrating the credit union’s on-premises VMware environment to Amazon Web Services (AWS), a move that would reduce costs, strengthen security, and facilitate uninterrupted access for the communities that depend on Carter. What makes the story remarkable is that a three-person team executed the entire migration while maintaining continuous service to members.

The breaking point

Carter’s legacy environment relied on a VMware virtualization stack hosted on physical servers in a single data center, all dependent on one fiber circuit for connectivity. Jason Berard, Carter’s chief information technology officer, saw how vulnerable this architecture was when a construction crew severed the primary fiber line. The backup circuit, which was routed through the same conduit, failed simultaneously. The organization remained completely offline for 24 hours. In a separate incident, a hardware failure caused a multiday outage, leaving critical systems unavailable for 3 consecutive days.

“We had a single point of failure in almost every layer of our infrastructure,” Berard said. The credit union had moved some VMware workloads to a colocation facility in Dallas, Texas, but the arrangement still required Carter’s small team to manage physical hardware, maintain VMware licensing, handle firmware updates, and budget for server replacement cycles every 3–5 years. The total cost of ownership continued to climb while the risk of member-facing outages remained unacceptably high.

Choosing AWS

Berard evaluated AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. The determining factor came not from a sales pitch but from a peer recommendation: The president of a credit union service organization (CUSO) shared their positive experience migrating to AWS, and colleagues across the credit union industry confirmed similar results. In a sector built on trust and cooperative values, those endorsements from fellow practitioners carried more weight than any vendor presentation. AWS also offered purpose-built solutions for credit unions, including infrastructure designed to meet the compliance and security requirements that financial institutions navigate daily.

A phased migration from VMware to AWS with a small team

Carter’s entire migration from its VMware environment to AWS was executed by a team of three, with Berard providing strategic oversight and two infrastructure specialists handling the day-to-day technical work. Rather than attempting a full lift and shift over a single weekend, the team chose a phased strategy that meant they built confidence and validated performance at each step before moving to the next set of workloads.

Carter began with a set of servers already approaching required operating system (OS) upgrades. Rather than investing in OS updates on aging hardware and renewing VMware licensing, the team rebuilt those workloads in AWS. As the migration matured, they incorporated AWS Transform MGN to streamline the transition of remaining systems.

One team member, Randy, had spent his career managing traditional on‑premises data centers. To support the shift in skill requirements, the team completed AWS training focused on cloud server management, auto scaling, and cost optimization. That investment proved effective: Carter successfully executed the migration without hiring external consultants and without disruption to member services throughout the transition.

Expanding access through Interactive Teller Machines

Carter has been rethinking how it delivers financial services to members who might not live near a traditional branch. The credit union has deployed an Interactive Teller Machine (ITM) service called CarterLIVE! as its primary service model across most locations, with only one traditional teller-line branch remaining.

These machines connect members to live tellers through two-way video while providing standard ATM functionality, effectively bringing face-to-face financial guidance to communities that might otherwise lack convenient access. As a next step, Carter is migrating its ITM infrastructure to a hybrid cloud model, splitting components between the credit union’s AWS environment and the ITM vendor’s cloud platform. With this collaborative approach, Carter aims to deliver the same redundancy and uptime the rest of its environment now enjoys while further strengthening its ability to serve members in rural and underserved areas.

Measurable results for members and the bottom line

Over a 3-year analysis period, Carter documented meaningful cost savings compared to the hardware replacement cycles, VMware licensing renewals, and maintenance contracts they would have faced on premises. Carter is projected to save more than $70,000 by migrating to AWS rather than refreshing its existing on‑premises server environment. These savings come from avoided hardware replacement costs, eliminated VMware licensing renewals, reduced data center overhead, and the efficiencies gained through the AWS consumption-based model.

The savings translate directly into resources Carter can reinvest in member services, financial education programs, and community development initiatives rather than spending them on hardware that depreciates the moment it arrives. In AWS, the credit union pays for the compute and storage it actually uses, scaling resources with member demand rather than overprovisioning for peak capacity.

The migration has also delivered a measurable improvement in security posture. Carter now benefits from AWS infrastructure designed to meet the security and compliance standards required by financial regulators, including encryption at rest and in transit, identity and access management controls, and continuous monitoring capabilities that would have been prohibitively expensive to implement on premises.

Most importantly for members, Carter hasn’t experienced the kind of extended outages that previously disrupted services. Members can access their accounts, process transactions, apply for loans, and connect with live tellers through CarterLIVE! video banking without interruption whether they bank in Shreveport, Springhill, or anywhere else in the country.

What other credit unions can learn

Carter Credit Union’s migration demonstrates that moving from an on-premises VMware environment to the cloud doesn’t require a large IT department or a massive budget. A small, focused team with the right training and a phased plan can modernize critical financial infrastructure while maintaining service for the members and communities who depend on them.

Here are some lessons to keep in mind if you’re considering a similar migration:

• Start with what needs upgrading anyway. Servers due for OS or hardware refreshes are natural first candidates for cloud migration.
• Invest in training before you migrate. Cloud fluency changed how Carter’s team approached every subsequent infrastructure decision.
• Lean on peers in the credit union community. Industry networks and CUSOs can provide honest firsthand feedback no vendor whitepaper can replicate.
• Phase the work and protect member service above all else. A gradual approach reduces risk and means members don’t bear the consequences of a transition they didn’t ask for.

To learn more about how AWS supports credit unions, visit the Digital Transformation for Credit Unions page or explore cloud migration resources to plan your own journey.

Carter Credit Union is headquartered in Shreveport, Louisiana, and has served its communities since 1954. Learn more at cartercu.org.