Accelerating SaaS growth with AWS and Elastic Beanstalk

From on premises to the AWS cloud

It’s fair to say that Workbench International is built on AWS technology and services, with the support, design and guidance of Lancom Technology. The provider of project management software solutions used around the world has, since 2017, relied on services in the AWS cloud, and in its latest move is preparing to introduce AWS Elastic Beanstalk to further enhance its Software as a Service platform.

About Workbench International

Workbench International is an independent software vendor serving the construction and civil contracting sectors. Its full-featured Workbench software provides accuracy and transparency when costing, managing, and delivering projects, supporting project managers in their mission to optimise resource use while minimising risk.

Workbench International

"With Workbench on AWS, we can update all customer environments in a couple of hours. It would have taken months to update those environments if we were running on premises"

Anton Grebinchukov / CTO

Reconfigured and optimised for SaaS

Project management has a considerably longer history than cloud computing does, and that’s reflected in Workbench International’s establishment long before AWS, cloud computing, or even Lancom Technology existed. Back in 1981, engineering and project management principles provided the foundation on which early software systems were designed.

However, with the introduction of Software as a Service, Workbench recognised the advantages of an online business. The company engaged Lancom Technology to guide the modernization of AWS environment, says CTO Anton Grebinchukov. “We adopted a serverless approach, which gave us greater flexibility and cost optimisation,” he says.

Putting AWS technology to work

Recognising the potential for expanding Workbench’s ability to reach and service customers through the power of the cloud, Lancom’s AWS Certified Solution Architects configured an auto scaling architecture which also offers high security and ‘uptime/service quality’ resilience.

The multi-tenant architecture uses AWS Lambda functions to adjust the number of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances as workloads change. Storage optimisation saw a switch from a manually operated network transfers to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), with volumes today measured in the terabytes.

Customisation matters to Workbench’s clients, and AWS has the tools to address this requirement. The introduction of CloudFront gave Workbench the ability to rapidly create client-specific frontends drawing on Amazon DynamoDB data.

The results of this work are remarkable. In the short time after maturing its new SaaS architecture, Workbench dramatically increased its customer base (by more than 160 percent), while driving down costs. For example, “We used to spend thousands of dollars to host less than 20 customers, but with our new serverless architecture we can host thousands for the same spend,” Grebinchukov notes.

Eliminating the limitations of on premises software resonated with existing customers too, with more than 80 percent migrating to the SaaS solution where the latest version is maintained with features including Microsoft Graph and 365 integrations.

“With Workbench on AWS, we can update all customer environments in a couple of hours. It would have taken months to update those environments if we were running on premises,” Grebinchukov points out.

Other benefits of AWS infrastructure include efficiency in one of the most crucial points in the customer journey. Onboarding customers takes a fraction of the time (from 4 hours to just 30 minutes), and server upgrades happen within minutes rather than the former hours required. And application updates are estimated to be 85 percent faster, taking place continuously rather than quarterly.

Introducing Elastic Beanstalk

Just as workbench International recognised changing times and changing technology availability when it first moved to the cloud, the company is ready to take the next steps on its optimisation journey with the guidance of Lancom Technology. Looking to improve deployment and developer productivity, it is adopting Terraform-managed AWS Elastic Beanstalk and transitioning to .NET Core, supporting continued innovation and cost efficiency.

“For future development plans, it’s also going to be easier for us to find people with experience in .NET Core compared to our existing development framework,” notes Grebinchukov.

The modernised approach removes dependency on custom Amazon Machine Images, introduces a multi-site deployment capability supporting up to 20 applications per instance, and standardises infrastructure deployment across clusters using Terraform modules and workspaces.

With the success of the initial AWS migration as a backdrop, and with Lancom Technology providing ongoing support and guidance, Grebinchukov says Workbench knew exactly where to look for the necessary expertise for this latest phase of its AWS engagement. “They know our business, they know our product, and they know our architecture,” he concludes.

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IT Managed Services
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