Bridge Migrates Self-hosted Database Architecture to Amazon Aurora

Executive Summary

Bridge is an all-in-one learning and performance management platform that increases individual engagement, promotes career development, and aligns multiple groups - employees, peers, and managers - to company goals. The platform comes with a learning management system, performance management tools, an employee-centric career development center, and survey capabilities, everything businesses need to support their staff in the workplace.

In 2020, Bridge began looking for a database migration expert that could help the company move its self-hosted architecture to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner with extensive database migration experience, ClearScale fit the bill perfectly.

The Challenge

Before migrating to AWS, Bridge’s learning and performance management platform depended on a self-hosted PostgreSQL database. Maintaining the architecture required a lot of manual time and effort from a centralized database administration (DBA) team. Bridge was then acquired and carved out of its parent company, forcing the subsidiary to come up with a new database solution that didn’t depend on the work of DBA resources.

Bridge’s VP of Engineering decided the best path forward would be to transition to a cloud-native managed database solution. More specifically, Bridge wanted to take advantage of the MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible database service, Amazon Aurora, which is part of the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). Amazon RDS automates backend administrative tasks, such as provisioning and patching, that would otherwise fall on engineers. Furthermore, Aurora provides commercial-grade performance at a fraction of the cost of self-hosted solutions.

The challenge was that Bridge didn’t have the expertise in-house to execute the database migration independently. As a result, the company decided to bring in ClearScale, a cloud consultancy with the Migration competency from AWS, to assist with the transition.

The ClearScale Solution

ClearScale took the time to fully understand Bridge’s technical requirements and overarching goals for migrating its database to AWS. Doing so enabled ClearScale to serve as a thought partner to Bridge and provide recommendations for how the company could make the most of its cloud migration journey.

ClearScale came up with a compelling technical plan and had both the experience and expertise to migrate Bridge’s databases successfully to AWS. The implementation team was available around the clock in case any issues were to arise, and Bridge had a clear view of what its future database architecture would be. Thanks to ClearScale’s leadership, the migration went smoothly.

The Benefits

Through the project, ClearScale saved Bridge’s IT team from dealing with execution complexity or database optimization work, as the consultancy had all the answers already from numerous previous migration projects. ClearScale essentially eliminated the need for discovery and positioned Bridge to hit the ground running with its new Amazon Aurora database.

Looking ahead, Bridge now has the database infrastructure it needs to explore new opportunities and upgrade its platform for end users. The Bridge team is especially excited about how it can take advantage of data and expand its use of analytics to deliver better experiences to companies all over the world.