Case Study - Asian Footwear Manage Services

Asian Footwear operates a large-scale, multi-application AWS environment with a rapidly growing digital footprint. As application usage increased across e-commerce, ERP, logistics, and partner platforms, the organization faced challenges related to performance bottlenecks, infrastructure sprawl, security exposure, rising AWS costs, and operational complexity.

The customer required a trusted AWS Managed Service Provider to:

• Improve platform reliability and scalability
• Strengthen security and access controls
• Optimize infrastructure costs
• Provide continuous monitoring and operational governance

Key Challenges

• Performance Constraints:
  Multiple EC2 and RDS workloads experienced high CPU utilization (up to 100%), impacting application responsiveness during peak business operations.
• Scalability Management:
  Rapid growth across e-commerce, ERP, OMS, and backend services required automated scaling to handle traffic fluctuations efficiently.
• Security Exposure:
  Several security groups had publicly open ports beyond required services, increasing the attack surface.
• Operational Complexity:
  Managing dozens of EC2 instances, Auto Scaling Groups, CI/CD pipelines, containers, and databases increased operational overhead.
• Cost Visibility & Optimization:
  Rising monthly AWS bills required proactive cost monitoring, rightsizing, and cleanup of unused resources.

i2k2 Networks implemented a comprehensive AWS Managed Services operating model focused on stability, security, scalability, and cost efficiency.

Core AWS Services Managed

• Amazon EC2, EBS, AMI, Snapshots
• Elastic Load Balancing (ALB)
• Auto Scaling Groups
• Amazon RDS
• Amazon S3 & CloudFront
• AWS Lambda
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon ECR
• AWS CodePipeline
• Amazon CloudWatch
• AWS WAF
• AWS IAM & SNS

Solution Highlights

5.1 Infrastructure & Compute Management

• Managed 50+ EC2 instances supporting ERP, e-commerce, OMS, WMS, analytics, and internal applications
• Continuous monitoring of CPU utilization and identification of high-load workloads
• Rightsizing and optimization recommendations for overutilized and underutilized instances
• Automated lifecycle management for AMIs and EBS snapshots

5.2 Scalability & High Availability

• Implemented and managed multiple Auto Scaling Groups across critical applications such as:
• E-commerce frontend
• Backend services
• OMS, WMS, retailer and distributor platforms
• Application Load Balancers configured for internet-facing workloads
• CloudFront distributions for global content delivery across multiple domains

5.3 CI/CD & Containerization

• Managed 40+ CodePipeline pipelines enabling automated build and deployment workflows
• Centralized container image management using Amazon ECR for backend and frontend services
• Streamlined deployments reduced manual intervention and deployment risk

Security & Compliance

i2k2 Networks strengthened the security posture through:

• IAM Access Reviews
• Identified IAM users with access keys older than 90 days
• Recommended key rotation and MFA enforcement
• Network Security
• Reviewed security groups with publicly open ports
• Recommended restricting access to required ports (80/443) and trusted IP ranges
• Secrets & Key Management
• AWS KMS and Secrets Manager integrated with Lambda and application services
• Web Security
• AWS WAF reviewed for protection of public-facing applications

Monitoring & Operational Efficiency

• Centralized monitoring using Amazon CloudWatch
• SNS-based alerting integrated with Slack and CI/CD notifications
• Identified gaps where RAM and Disk metrics were not monitored due to missing CloudWatch Agent
• Provided recommendations to enable full-stack observability (CPU, RAM, Disk, application logs)

Backup & Data Protection

• Reviewed backup configurations and identified gaps in centralized backup policies
• Recommended standardized AWS Backup plans for EC2 and RDS workloads
• Lifecycle management for snapshots to reduce storage overhead

Cost Optimization & Financial Governance

• Identified:
• Unused EBS volumes
• Unassociated Elastic IPs
• Stopped and idle EC2 instances
• Monthly AWS spend analyzed (ranging from USD 4,000 to USD 10,000+)
• Provided actionable recommendations to:
• Release unused resources
• Optimize high-bandwidth workloads
• Reduce storage and data transfer costs

• Improved Performance & Reliability
  Proactive monitoring and scaling reduced downtime and performance degradation.
• Enhanced Security Posture
  Reduced attack surface through security group hardening and IAM best practices.
• Operational Stability
  Standardized monitoring, alerting, and CI/CD processes improved day-to-day operations.
• Cost Transparency & Optimization
  Clear visibility into AWS spend with actionable optimization recommendations.
• Future-Ready Cloud Platform
  Scalable and well-governed AWS environment aligned with business growth.

• 26+ years of hosting and cloud services expertise
• AWS-focused DevOps and Managed Services practice
• 24×7×365 monitoring and support
• Secure, compliant, and fully licensed solutions
• Proven experience managing complex, high-scale AWS environments