Galelo, established in 2016 by two entrepreneurs, is an advisory firm based in South Africa. The company aims to contribute positively to the South African economy and the broader African continent by addressing market and funding participation barriers for small businesses, particularly those from previously disadvantaged backgrounds. Galelo collaborates with SMEs, large corporations, and funders, utilising their technological solutions and deep management consulting expertise to overcome these barriers.

Galelo's infrastructure was previously hosted on a single server in Oracle Cloud, which presented several significant challenges:

• Single Point of Failure: The reliance on a single server meant that any failure could lead to extended downtime and potential data loss, severely impacting Galelo's operations.
• Limited Scalability: As Galelo's business grew, the limitations of a single server became apparent, causing performance bottlenecks and preventing the company from efficiently scaling its operations.
• Compliance and Security Risks: The lack of redundancy and proper disaster recovery mechanisms led to compliance issues, especially concerning data redundancy and security standards. Running diverse workloads on one server also posed security risks, making the system vulnerable to breaches.
• Operational Inefficiencies: Maintenance activities required downtime, disrupting business operations. The resource constraints also made it challenging to run complex workloads and implement an effective disaster recovery plan.

BATSAMAYI, an Advanced Tier AWS Partner with over 50 AWS certifications, was engaged to address Galelo's challenges by migrating and managing their infrastructure on AWS. The solution focused on enhancing security,streamlining operations, and transforming Galelo’s DevOps practices through the following measures:

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Transformation

• To standardise and automate the creation of Galelo’s infrastructure, BATSAMAYI implemented Infrastructure as Code using AWS CloudFormation. By automating the infrastructure provisioning, all changes were processed through a CI/CD pipeline, ensuring quality, security, and policy checks were applied. This approach eliminated configuration drift between environments and ensured that both production and non-production environments were consistent. Automated the creation of "Golden AMIs" for all of Galelo's applications, which were then integrated into an auto-scaling strategy, allowing for dynamic scaling based on demand. This reduced downtime, eliminated production issues related to misconfigurations, and improved Galelo’s ability to handle spikes in user traffic.

Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

BATSAMAYI implemented a comprehensive DevOps pipeline using AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild. The pipeline integrated Quality Assurance, Security Testing, and Automated Deployments at every stage—Development, Test, Beta, and Production—ensuring that changes were rigorously validated before reaching production. By incorporating parallel test execution on ephemeral environments, Galelo saw a significant improvement in deployment speed, reducing deployment times from 60 minutes to just 7 minutes, and improving release cycles from quarterly to weekly.

Security: Implementing Identity Management and Access Control

• Defining Access Controls: BATSAMAYI implemented a robust IAM strategy that clearly defined and enforced permissions across all AWS resources. This ensured that only authorised personnel and services could access specific data and applications, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorised access.
• Enforcing Permissions Across Services: IAM roles and policies were uniformly applied across Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon EC2, and other AWS services used by Galelo. This consistency in security measures helped in maintaining a secure and compliant infrastructure.
• Auditing and Monitoring: Continuous monitoring was enabled through AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config, allowing Galelo to audit all access and activities within their AWS environment. This provided a comprehensive audit trail, which was crucial for compliance and security reviews.

Providing Cloud Operations Management

• Centralised Operations Management: BATSAMAYI established a centralised operations management framework using AWS Systems Manager and AWS Service Catalog with AWS CloudFormation. This provided Galelo with a unified interface to manage and monitor their infrastructure, both in the cloud and on-premises.
• Automation of Operational Tasks: Routine tasks such as patch management, backups, and resource scaling were automated using AWS tools. This approach not only improved efficiency but also ensured that best practices were consistently followed, reducing the risk of human error. This automation included the implementation of Automated Deployments through AWS DevOps tools like AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeDeploy, as well as the deployment of an Automated Scalable infrastructure through AWS Auto Scaling. These measures allowed Galelo to maintain a high level of operational efficiency, ensuring consistent performance and rapid response to changing workloads.
• Integration with Existing ITSM: The solution included integration with Galelo’s existing IT Service Management (ITSM) systems and third-party tools, ensuring seamless operations across different environments.
• Built-in Best Practices: By leveraging AWS’s built-in best practices, BATSAMAYI ensured that Galelo's infrastructure was optimised for security, performance, and cost-effectiveness. Automated monitoring and alerting systems were also put in place to proactively manage potential issues.

The migration to AWS and the implementation of security and operations management strategies resulted in significant improvements for Galelo:

• Enhanced Security and Compliance: The IAM framework, along with continuous monitoring, ensured that Galelo's infrastructure met the highest security standards, reducing the risk of breaches and compliance violations.
• Increased Scalability and Reliability: The new AWS-based infrastructure supported by auto-scaling and load balancing, provided Galelo with the scalability needed to support their growing business while improving reliability and availability.
• Operational Efficiency: Automation of routine tasks and the integration of DevOps best practices reduced downtime, accelerated deployment cycles, and improved overall operational efficiency.
• Cost Optimization: By optimising resource usage and automating routine tasks, BATSAMAYI helped Galelo achieve significant cost savings while maintaining a robust and secure infrastructure.