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Case Study

How iPromote Overcame Legacy Roadblocks with AWS

Clearscale re-architected the company’s platform to eliminate bottlenecks and create a secure, scalable foundation for the future.

Client Profile

Industry Advertising & Marketing

Competencies Migration & Application Modernization

Overview

iPromote, a digital advertising technology provider, faced mounting challenges with its legacy Microsoft SQL Server environment. The database’s high licensing costs, performance limits, and inability to scale horizontally constrained growth.
Clearscale migrated iPromote’s systems to AWS Aurora and implemented a modern data lake on Amazon S3, enabling scalability, improved performance,
and cost savings.

Meet Our Hero

iPromote delivers digital advertising solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, helping them compete effectively online. To power its ad-serving platform, the company relied on a Microsoft SQL Server database.

Over time, this architecture became a liability. Licensing fees increased, the system’s vertical scalability hit limits, and performance suffered under growing workloads. iPromote recognized that its infrastructure was holding back innovation and competitiveness. The company set out to modernize its applications and data architecture on AWS to establish a cloud-native foundation.

The Goal

  • Migrate away from Microsoft SQL Server
  • Adopt a cloud-based architecture with AWS Aurora PostgreSQL
  • Enable horizontal scalability for future growth
  • Offload workloads to a data lake
  • Modernize the application layer for greater efficiency

The Challenge

Challenge 01
Legacy SQL Server environment created performance and scalability issues

Challenge 02
High licensing costs reduced financial efficiency

Challenge 03
Vertical scalability limits constrained growth

Challenge 04
Inefficient architecture slowed operations

Challenge 05
Modernization was needed to remain competitive

The Solution

Clearscale partnered with iPromote to modernize its infrastructure with AWS.

Step 01: Database Modernation

  • Used AWS Database Migration Service to move 15 TB of data from SQL Server to Aurora PostgreSQL
  • Refactored 800 stored procedures (600 for the database, 200 for the data lake)

Step 02: Application Modernization

  • Refactored iPromote’s .NET applications to optimize for Aurora
  • Enhanced the ad-serving platform to leverage modern database features

Step 03: Data Lake Architecture

  • Built a data lake on Amazon S3
  • Implemented Spark jobs on Amazon EMR for large-scale data processing
  • Offloaded analytics workloads from the transactional database

Step 04: Proof-of-Concept and Deployment

  • Conducted POCs to validate architecture and performance
  • Completed production deployment with a 100-hour cutover window

The Impact

Migrated 15 TB of data with minimal downtime

Avoided SQL Server licensing fees, reducing costs

Refactored 800 stored procedures to optimize workflows

Database reduced to half its original size, improving efficiency

100-hour cutover window ensured smooth migration with limited disruption

“After 20 years, it was time to upgrade from our legacy database. Clearscale put us on Amazon Aurora and set us up with a data lake and analytics process that can scale easily as our data processing needs grow. It was exactly what we needed to take iPromote to the next level.”

— John Morton, Platform Architect, iPromote

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