Migrated MOVE’s, a leading real estate tech company, REALTOR^®.com platform to AWS

About the client

Move Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp, provides unsurpassed real estate information, tools, and professional expertise across a family of websites and mobile experiences for consumers and real estate professionals through all stages of the home journey.

Challenge

MOVE was looking for a highly scalable and available solution to support the exponential growth of the REALTOR^®.com platform. The significant web traffic boost was becoming increasingly challenging to sustain, especially on their existing on-premises data-center. Their infrastructure required constant IT investment and had high operating costs, on top of prohibiting agile deployment of new features. The client aimed to migrate to a solution that would sustain the high number of users, as well as quickly accommodate the complexity and the number of new features developed. Following the migration, REALTOR^®.com would require continuous operational support.

Solution

We helped migrate the REALTOR^®.com platform to AWS Cloud in a phased approach. An initial assessment phase was ran to understand the impact result from the migration of various modules. The migration procedure was conducted using AWS Elastic Beanstalk which allowed for an easy transition to the AWS Cloud. Various checks and tests were carried out during this phase. Within a short period, using the canary release technique, the platform was incrementally opened to traffic.

The migration included a feasibility study by developing POC’s, designing the components and modules, and deployment and performance testing the applications in a cloud environment.

Post migration, we helped MOVE address various organizational needs, such as control, standardization, security and governance, maintenance, scalability, DevOps, and cost optimization.

• The platform’s design was reviewed to validate if there were other efficient options and approaches. During the initial assessment phase, the team planned and tested for response time, scalability, and direct-connect greenlight
• Multiple CloudFormation templates were created for different environments to reduce manual provisioning. We performed monthly audits on AWS environment to scan for possible vulnerabilities in the security group ports.
• Cost was monitored using AWS cost management features. A budget and alerts were set in case there was an unexpected spike over some of the service to PaaS based offerings.

Results

Following the migration to AWS Cloud, the REALTOR^®.com platform gained the necessary elasticity to automatically manage different traffic patterns. MOVE can easily scale its infrastructure to support user growth and features expansion by leveraging AWS Cloud. AWS will ensure the platform will adapt to the exact computing power required to easily support any business needs, as well as increase flexibility and reduce costs.

MOVE’s engineering team will be able to operate and scale without needing to know any details about a specific system, with the help of the automatic dynamic scalability in AWS.

• More than 25% cost savings by leveraging AWS cost management features
• Security posture was improved by conducting regular audits
• 35% reduction in release cycle by using CloudFormation & CI/CD tools