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Some of our Projects

Application Tracking System

Our Federal Client had been receiving thousands of applications for a particular program every year. However, the application process was complex and involved several checkpoints and validations that were not apparent to the applicants. As a result, applicants were often left in the dark about the status of their application, and the wait times were long, ranging from months to over a year. In addition, rejection notifications were not always consistent, and the method of communication was not always clear. This lack of transparency and communication resulted in a high number of manual requests to retrieve the status of the application, which placed a significant burden on the department's staff.

To address these issues, our team implemented an online portal that allowed applicants to apply for the program and enabled automatic validations. Additionally, we piloted a tracking mechanism that provided real-time updates to the applicants. The mechanism was integrated with the customer-facing portal, allowing applicants to see the current state of their application, whether more information was needed, and the time elapsed from the beginning. This provided immediate and on-demand updates to the applicants and reduced the number of manual requests for status updates. The customer-facing portal also reduced the burden on the department's staff, who no longer had to retrieve requested status updates manually.

Overall, the implementation of the online portal and the tracking mechanism significantly improved the application process for the Federal Client. Applicants were no longer left in the dark about the status of their application, and the burden on the department's staff was greatly reduced. The new system allowed for greater transparency and communication, which ultimately resulted in a more efficient and effective application process. 

Integration Platform

Our team was engaged to help design and implement a hybrid integration platform for a federal department that was trying to combine on-premise and cloud-based integration tools and services to create a unified platform. It enables organizations to connect different systems, applications, and data sources, whether they are hosted on-premises or in the cloud, and exchange data in real-time.
 
This platform is playing a critical role in enabling digital transformation initiatives by streamlining business processes and improving data accessibility. It helps connect disparate systems, applications, and data sources, creating a unified view of data across the organization. This enables faster decision-making and provides greater insights into business operations.
 
AWS was selected provide the underlying infrastructure for OpenShift. OpenShift provides an enterprise-grade solution for deploying and managing containerized applications. It enables organizations to build, deploy, and scale applications in a flexible and scalable environment, making it an ideal component of a hybrid integration platform. By using AWS to host OpenShift, organizations can benefit from the scalability, reliability, and security of the AWS platform. They can leverage AWS services such as EC2, EBS, and ELB to provide a scalable and highly available infrastructure for hosting containerized applications.
 

Azure Migration

GC Brokers was recently engaged to complete a successful migration and modernization project for a federal government department business team that needed to update a number of their applications while optimizing their cloud costs. Here is how we did it using Azure technologies:

Analysis: We started by conducting a thorough analysis of their existing infrastructure, which consisted of several legacy applications running on-premises and some cloud-based services. We used the Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool to identify the dependencies, performance, security, and scalability requirements of each application, as well as the current and projected cloud spending. We also assessed the readiness and feasibility of migrating and modernizing each application to Azure.

Roadmap: Based on our analysis, we created a detailed roadmap for the migration and modernization project, which included the following steps:

  • Prioritize the applications based on their business value, complexity, and migration readiness.
  • Choose the best migration strategy for each application, such as re-hosting, re-platforming, re-factoring, or re-building.
  • Select the most suitable Azure service and platform for each application, such as Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure SQL Database, or Azure Synapse Analytics.
  • Define the migration and modernization tasks, timelines, resources, and risks for each application.
  • Implement a FinOps strategy to monitor and optimize the cloud costs throughout the project using Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor.

Execution: We executed the migration and modernization project according to the roadmap, using best practices and tools to ensure a smooth and efficient process. We migrated and modernized each application one by one, testing and validating them along the way. We used the Azure Migrate: Migration and modernization tool to migrate VMs to Azure using agentless or agent-based migration. We also used Azure DevOps to automate the deployment and configuration of the applications on Azure. We implemented a finops strategy to ensure that the cloud costs were reduced by over 35% and controlled by finops best practices. We provided regular updates and feedback to the business team, as well as training and support for the new cloud-based applications.

The result was a successful migration and modernization project that delivered improved performance, security, scalability, and cost-efficiency for the business team’s suite of applications. We are proud of our work and look forward to collaborating with them on future projects.

 

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