Challenging the status quo for nearly thirty years, brokerage business AFG collaborated with JourneyOne for their AWS cloud operations.
AFG’s mission: To create a fairer financial future for all
After challenging the status quo for nearly thirty years, AFG seek to deepen their industry leadership with a next-generation suite of mortgage broking and financial services. As early adopters of AWS cloud technology, AFG are well-versed in the capabilities of the AWS public cloud platform and thus have a sophisticated vision for how a ‘cloud-native platform’ might be crafted using AWS as an operational foundation for their business service suite.
The challenges
AFG selected JourneyOne to meet two key challenges in realising their vision for a cloud-native platform: availability of advanced AWS platform development skills and ambitious implementation timeframes to meet AFG’s transformation program milestones.
Cloud platform establishment is not often repeated within organisations and so development of internal capability can be slow, with low return on investment. Embedding our consultants in their cloud operations team allowed AFG to quickly leverage JourneyOne’s previous experience provisioning platforms whilst focussing on sustainment and enhancement-oriented skills development for AFG’s internal resources.
Building the on-ramp for business transformation
With time to market and agility being critical, typical approaches to platform development would prove insufficient. JourneyOne therefore trialled the adoption of the AWS Landing Zone Accelerator solution which, via an automated deployment pipeline, enabled the repeatable deployment of complex service configurations for accounts/organisation management, financial management, security management and the like.
Assisted by our AWS Advanced Services Partner status, JourneyOne was able to adopt AWS Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA), despite its origin and application being typically restricted to projects delivered by AWS’s own professional services organisation. Indeed, LZA was critical in the repeatable, timely delivery of the highly complex network configurations necessary to realise AFG’s architecture. Integration of serverless resources with networked resources across AFG’s cloud-native platform, legacy platform and external users/systems was a notable success.
Guided by our FlyOps cloud platform knowledge base, core delivery team, and extended team of platform specialists and AWS Ambassadors, JourneyOne have not only delivered platform increments to schedule but heeded AFG’s focus on automation and DevOps service delivery for sustainable, low-cost platform operations.
— Cristian Southall, JourneyOne Chief Technology Officer
JourneyOne has been assisting AFG build our next generation cloud platform, and the partnership has been a very positive experience. JourneyOne has brought a wealth of expertise to the project and their model allows us to have both dedicated engineers on-site for hands-on implementation and access to their wider talent pool for guidance and consultation.
— Mick O’Connor, Cloud Infrastructure & Operations Delivery Manager, AFG
Sustaining the benefit of platform investment
JourneyOne remain engaged in the evolution of AFG’s cloud-native platform, extending support for additional workloads, improving platform security and optimising factors such as cost and observability. We continue working with AFG to integrate best practices and new technologies whilst reducing management overhead and building the organisational capability necessary to sustain and evolve the platform over the long term.
Cloud-native Platform development services
Find out more
JourneyOne’s relationship with AFG is ongoing, and we look forward to sharing more of the journey as their product continues to develop.
For more information about our Product Factory approach to cloud-native application development and our experience with AWS technologies, please visit the product page or get in touch with the team directly.
