Contino and AWS: Migrating 70 Apps in 70 Days at LG CNS

About the Client

LG CNS is a global Information Technology services company that enables digital innovation for customers through emerging technology.

A wholly owned subsidiary of LG Corporation, LG CNS delivers technology services and solutions including consulting, system implementation, and operations to Korean and overseas customers.

The Challenge

LG CNS is focused on providing new value to customers by helping them to develop new business opportunities - one of which is delivering IT transformation, automation and standardisation through migration to public cloud. To become the cloud centre of excellence for LG Corporation and a market-leading cloud services provider in South Korea, LG CNS acknowledged it needed to learn through accelerating its own cloud transformation and saw an accelerated cloud migration program as the catalyst for such dramatic change within their business. Accordingly, LG Corporation set a goal of shifting 90 per cent of its infrastructure to the cloud by 2024.

A key element to achieving a successful transformation was drawing on international expertise to challenge LG CNS’ existing ways of working and overhaul its extensive operations geared to running on-premise data centres. Executing this in a culturally different environment where advanced cloud technical skills are not as prevalent and legacy IT infrastructure meant a traditional waterfall approach to the migration was not viable. LG CNS believed it was necessary to demonstrate faith and confidence in the migration to public cloud at scale, at pace and under pressure. As such, a highly collaborative team embarked on an ambitious project to migrate 70 applications from LG CNS’ on-premise data centres to an AWS Landing Zone in 70 days, without compromising on security and managing business risk to the highest standard.

The Solution

LG CNS selected AWS Professional Services and Contino given their proven ability to deliver comprehensive migrations at scale to work in close partnership with LG CNS to deliver “70 in 70”. The cross-functional team formed by AWS Professional Services, Contino and LG CNS comprised a diverse but highly specialised and agile team with a range of skill sets including consulting, leadership, database, migration and AWS architecture expertise. This group of specialists was critical to transforming and transitioning applications from legacy infrastructure and upskilling the local team to meet the future demands of the market while following the strong LG-led mandate of embracing different ways of working.

During the project, AWS Professional Services and Contino successfully delivered:

• A native AWS Landing Zone built using global best practices from AWS Professional Services
• A rapid and successful migration of 72 Applications live onto AWS cloud
• A significant cloud native security posture uplift in security architecture introducing 90 best practice cloud security controls and implementing the breadth of the AWS security fleet
• A new foundational capability with dozens of LG CNS consultants and engineers trained in cloud architecture and accelerated migration techniques to form the backbone of LG CNS' cloud consulting business

The Business Outcome

Contino and AWS Professional Services help LG CNS achieve a rapid migration of 70 on-premise applications to public cloud in 70 days.

LG CNS now has a resilient but elastic market-ready cloud platform to accelerate cloud adoption journeys for LG Corporation and its customers.

Some examples of immediate and tangible benefits for LG CNS include:

• Significant knowledge transfer capability to lead other similar 50 in 50 programs across LG Corporation
• One-way and two-way door processes to fast-track decision-making
• Elimination of analysis paralysis for engineers to experiment and learn rapidly in an unknown environment

The “70 in 70” program is just the beginning of LG CNS’ 5-year journey to aggressively shift 90 per cent of the LG Corporation’s infrastructure to public cloud. However, successfully migrating 70 applications in 70 days demonstrated to LG CNS what is possible. LG CNS proved that rapid transformation and an uplift in cloud capability is achievable by leveraging the skills and experience of the right technology partners. AWS Professional Services and Contino helped LG CNS to rewrite legacy culture and empower employees with data and confidence to learn, improve and repeat effectively.