Case Study - HP PLC

HP faced critical operational challenges that hindered innovation and business growth. The existing infrastructure lacked automation, exposed security gaps, and struggled with scalability, leading to inefficiencies and risks.

Key Challenges

• Frequent Downtime & Inefficient Deployments: Manual releases often caused service outages and delayed new feature rollouts.
• Unpatched Vulnerabilities: Expired SSL certificates, overly permissive security group rules, weak WAF configurations, and domain whitelisting gaps left workloads exposed.
• Security Risks: Publicly accessible EC2 and RDS workloads increased the risk of unauthorized access and non-compliance.
• Scalability Issues: Inability to handle sudden spikes in traffic, resulting in poor performance for global users.
• Mailing Limitations: HP initially considered third-party mailing systems but realized they were costly and less reliable.

i2k2 Networks designed and delivered a secure, production-grade AWS-native solution following the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The solution emphasized CI/CD automation, scalability, and security while minimizing costs and operational risks.

Solution Highlights

CI/CD Automation & Release Velocity

• Implemented AWS Code Pipeline, Code Build, and Code Deploy integrated with Bitbucket as the source repository.
• Enabled zero-downtime deployments using blue/green and rolling deployment strategies.
• Increased release frequency with automation, reducing manual intervention.

Compute, Networking & Scalability

• Deployed Amazon EC2 in Auto Scaling Groups to automatically adjust capacity based on demand.
• Integrated Application Load Balancer (ALB) with AWS Global Accelerator to optimize performance for global users.
• Leveraged Amazon RDS with automated backups and storage autoscaling.
• Used Amazon S3 for storing static assets, logs, and backups.

Mailing & Notifications

• Recommended Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) over third-party tools.
• Improved reliability and cost efficiency with 98%+ email delivery success compared to <75% earlier.

• Configured AWS WAF to protect against SQL injections, XSS, and bot attacks.
• Imported SSL certificates into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to ensure uninterrupted secure communications.
• Migrated workloads to private VPC subnets with NAT Gateways and VPC Endpoints for secure outbound access.
• Deployed Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail for monitoring, logging, and compliance auditing.

• 100% zero-downtime deployments achieved with automated CI/CD.
• Release frequency doubled (4–5 deployments per week vs. 1–2 previously).
• Mailing reliability improved to 98%+ with Amazon SES.
• Attack surface reduced significantly with WAF rules, ACM, and private subnet isolation.
• Seamless scalability ensured smooth global operations during peak traffic with Auto Scaling and Global Accelerator.

By leveraging AWS-native services, i2k2 Networks successfully delivered a production-grade, secure, and scalable DevOps solution for HP. The solution addressed downtime, scalability, and security challenges while reducing costs and enabling rapid innovation. HP can now confidently scale its applications globally while maintaining compliance and operational efficiency.