QGenda Refactors Newly Acquired Platform, Migrates Successfully to AWS

Executive Summary

Atlanta-based QGenda provides a comprehensive suite of cloud-based workforce management solutions for the healthcare industry. Over 4,000 customers use QGenda today to schedule providers, manage credentialing, optimize capacity, and more. The company has grown significantly since its founding in 2006. 5,000 hospitals and health systems in 7 countries currently use QGenda for 45+ specialties and more than 415,000 providers.

As part of its growth strategy, QGenda acquired the automated scheduling software provider, Shift Admin. QGenda wanted to migrate Shift Admin to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and re-platform key application elements. To ensure a successful migration, QGenda hired ClearScale, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner with 11 AWS competencies, including the Migration competency.

The Challenge

Integrating Shift Admin into QGenda’s ecosystem meant three things:

• Migrating Shift Admin’s web application from the previous data center to AWS
• Reconfiguring Shift Admin’s approach to data hosting
• Bringing modern DevOps practices to the application deployment process

Based on its goals to modernize the platform, QGenda decided the best path forward would be to bring in a cloud expert that could refactor Shift Admin’s application and make crucial updates. ClearScale was the right partner for the job based on its long history of successful cloud migration and modernization engagements.

The ClearScale Solution

The first step ClearScale took was to design a new architecture for Shift Admin that included:

• A highly available multi-AZ network infrastructure
• An EC2-based compute (application) tier
• EFS shared storage
• A database tier based on Amazon Aurora
• Several dozen Cron jobs rebuilt using Amazon EventBridge
• CI/CD pipelines based on AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and Packer
• A new disaster recovery environment in a separate AWS region

On the EC2 app tier front, ClearScale had to find and test an appropriate Linux image that would be up to date in relation to security patches and hardened to comply with the latest security requirements.

The client then performed tests of its own to confirm the Shift Admin application was fully functional in the cloud. Moreover, ClearScale and QGenda worked in tandem to implement related AWS services, like AWS Systems Manager Parameters Store and AWS Secrets Manager.

The Benefits

Thanks to ClearScale’s guidance, QGenda was able to integrate Shift Admin successfully into its standard development processes. Shift Admin can now take advantage of the high availability and scalability of the AWS platform.

Furthermore, QGenda can now execute the full cycle of application development, testing, and deployment with AWS’ powerful cloud-native services. The company also has access to pre-production environments in AWS to accelerate development.

Finally, Shift Admin’s infrastructure management overhead came down significantly due to the high level of automation and AWS managed services usage that ClearScale implemented. This meant QGenda didn’t have to take on as much technical debt and could continue delivering exceptional services to healthcare organizations worldwide.