HCLSoftware Accelerates Innovation by 100% with SaaS Migration to AWS

HCLSoftware launched its intelligent automation platform, HCL BigFix Service Management, with a vision to unlock the power of the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI). The intelligent operations portfolio simplifies IT and business operations with tools for AI implementation, monitoring, and management services. HCL BigFix Service Management, a service management platform in the portfolio, streamlines the delivery of IT services to employees.

Built as a cloud-native, multi-tenant software using microservices, HCL BigFix Service Management faced significant challenges soon after its launch. HCLSoftware struggled to consistently meet its 99.5 percent availability target, and it encountered limitations with its proprietary database and the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) toolset. These challenges presented continuous obstacles to scaling HCL BigFix Service Management

HCLSoftware decided to migrate HCL BigFix Service Management to Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2022. Varun Nagpal, associate vice president of HCLSoftware, explains, “AWS is the cloud of choice for many of our customers, and it offers a breadth of regions for global deployments.”

The company worked with AWS Professional Services to accelerate the migration. Initially projected to span nine months, the process was successfully completed in just six. Today, HCL BigFix Service Management supports over 300,000 end users.

HCLSoftware prioritized creating a flexible, cloud-agnostic architecture that could integrate with any customer's needs. A key component of the migration is Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, chosen for its ability to operate and scale open-source PostgreSQL deployments. Using Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments improved the availability and durability of production workloads, ensuring the HCL BigFix Service Management platform overcame its previous database limitations.

HCLSoftware also adopted AWS Lambda for serverless computing, which sped up deployments, change creation, and event-driven processes—plus facilitated the use of a broader selection of microservices and CI/CD tools like Jenkins. Additionally, the company implemented Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) for container orchestration, increasing operational efficiency.

“We’re enhancing our products and portfolio thanks to the range of microservices AWS offers, and we’ve managed to achieve no-downtime upgrades for our customers with Amazon EKS,” says Mohit Jain, general manager at HCLSoftware. During the migration, HCLSoftware also took the opportunity to reinforce its security posture, adding guardrails and governance controls with AWS Control Tower.

Since the migration to AWS, HCL BigFix Service Management has consistently achieved at least 99.5 percent availability and aims for 99.9 percent. Downtime during normal operations and upgrades has been eliminated, garnering praise from customers for the platform's enhanced performance. Furthermore, integration capabilities have improved. Says Nagpal, “We’re able to offer more secure and flexible integration capabilities to our customers through API [application programming interface] gateways.”

HCLSoftware has expanded its global business by leveraging the geographic reach of AWS services. Mohit and the technology team have also experienced a significant increase in development speed. Mohit says. “Now we have the flexibility to select the best AWS solution for each use case, and the active online AWS community is a great resource whenever we have questions."

With its previous challenges addressed, HCLSoftware plans to introduce new generative AI features on AWS in HCL BigFix Service Management. For instance, generative AI will be used to provide a comprehensive summary of events to promptly update a subject-matter expert. The business is also working closely with AWS on go-to-market opportunities to increase its global presence.