Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - How Oaktree Capital saved 50% by modernizing its Microsoft workloads (ENT318)

Summary

• Speakers: Chitra Hota (Managing Director, Head of Data and Architecture, Oaktree), Yogi Bharat (Principal Solutions Architect, AWS), Thor Giddings (America's SA Leader, AWS).
• Modernization Defined: AWS views modernization as transforming applications and infrastructure to utilize cloud-native services, which unlocks new business capabilities, accelerates innovation, and reduces technical debt.
• Modernization Process: It involves assessing to build a business case, mobilizing teams across IT and business, and the actual modernization of code and systems.
• Microsoft Workloads on AWS: Customers often start with rehosting (e.g., Windows on EC2), then move to replatforming (e.g., containers, managed services), and finally refactoring (e.g., serverless, cloud-native databases).
• SQL Server to Amazon Redshift: Modernization involves moving to a fully managed, self-serve, fault-tolerant data warehouse like Amazon Redshift, which supports analytics without data movement and offers better price performance.
• Oaktree's Modernization Journey: Faced with scalability issues, outdated SQL Server databases, and a need for agile data processing, Oaktree modernized its data stack with AWS services, resulting in significant cost savings and improved SLAs.
• Architecture: Oaktree's architecture includes a single data lake with S3 and AWS Lake Formation, AWS Glue for ETL, Athena for serverless querying, and Redshift Serverless for advanced analytics.
• Use Cases: Oaktree tackled index processing, ESG reporting, document parsing with Textract and Kendra, and enterprise reporting with Redshift Serverless.
• Lessons Learned: Oaktree learned to curate impactful use cases, assess on-prem limitations, accelerate modernization with cloud services, and continuously reskill teams.
• Next Steps: Oaktree plans to optimize cloud usage, prioritize modernization targets, and leverage AWS cost programs and partner networks for further modernization efforts.

Insights

• Business-Driven Modernization: Oaktree's approach emphasizes the importance of aligning modernization efforts with business value, ensuring that technology investments directly contribute to competitive differentiation and customer experience.
• Incremental Modernization: Rather than a wholesale modernization, Oaktree's strategy involved modernizing components of critical applications, demonstrating a pragmatic approach to transformation that minimizes risk and disruption.
• Cloud-Native Advantages: The shift to AWS cloud-native services enabled Oaktree to handle large volumes of data more efficiently, improve SLAs, and process both structured and unstructured data, showcasing the flexibility and scalability of cloud solutions.
• Cultural Change: Oaktree's journey underscores the necessity of cultural change within an organization, including changing mindsets about traditional ways of working and embracing agile practices and continuous learning.
• Vendor Lock-in Considerations: Oaktree's decision to stay within the AWS ecosystem for data warehousing, despite considering alternatives like Snowflake, highlights the strategic considerations around vendor lock-in and the benefits of leveraging integrated cloud services.
• Cost Optimization: The narrative illustrates that modernization is not only about adopting new technologies but also about optimizing costs. Oaktree's story shows that modernization can lead to significant cost savings while improving service levels and business agility.
• Partner Ecosystem: Thor Giddings' closing remarks highlight the support available from AWS, including solution architecture teams, partner networks, and cost optimization programs, which can be instrumental for organizations embarking on modernization journeys.