Kyriba: Cloud Migration and Mobilization at Global Scale

As a leader in treasury and financial software solutions, Kyriba has helped clients activate and protect cash and liquidity for more than 20 years. More than 2,000 clients across 100 countries rely on Kyriba to achieve cash visibility, manage foreign exchange losses, reduce fraud and make better, faster decisions based on insights and artificial intelligence.

With their sights set on substantial domestic and international growth, Kyriba wanted to transform their data management platform into a globally accessible tool that would scale with their business, enhance the customer experience and comply with international financial regulations — all while maintaining high standards for security and governance.

Kyriba determined migrating to the cloud was key to achieving these ambitions. To accelerate the migration process, Kyriba sought a partner with (a) extensive experience guiding others on their journey to the cloud and (b) intimate knowledge of the financial services industry. Kyriba chose WWT to help spearhead its cloud migration thanks to demonstrated excellence in both areas.

- Matthew Dartez, Director of DevOps/Engineering, Kyriba

Challenge: Migrating to the cloud

Transitioning from on-premises data management to the cloud is a complex, technical undertaking that must be tailored to each organization's specific needs and goals. Kyriba leadership recognized that to achieve success, it would be critical to establish patterns of security, networking, shared services and scalability. Equally important would be the need to upskill staff and processes for operating and maintaining their new cloud infrastructure.

WWT joined Kyriba after they had completed the initial "Assess" phase of the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), which features a three-step migration framework.

Approach: Four workstreams

Teams from Kyriba and WWT collaborated to develop a robust cloud migration strategy, establish requirements for a broad range of topics, and perform the necessary planning to ensure a successful execution.

The engagement entailed four workstreams:

1. Mobilize cloud foundation: We reviewed Kyriba's IT environments to ensure they were aligned to AWS' requirements for proceeding to the Mobilize phase of the MAP framework.
2. Kafka development: We collaborated to implement Kafka as a continuous change data capture (CDC) and data streaming platform.
3. DataCopy automation: We supported efforts to automate functions and processes necessary to run Kyriba's custom DataCopy application, which copies customer datasets from Oracle to AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) Oracle.
4. Oracle to AWS RDS Oracle migration analysis and testing: Kyriba and WWT specialists also joined forces to prepare the Oracle databases supporting their KAPP application for migration to AWS RDS Oracle.

The working relationship between Kyriba and WWT during the migration process was characterized by frequent and open communication. The teams established a weekly cadence with stakeholders to review status, blockers and action items; facilitated bi-monthly strategy sessions to conduct deep dives into technical topics with subject matter experts; and jointly presented monthly status updates to Kyriba's CTO.

Solution: Six steps to mobilization

The collaborative process and workstreams outlined above led to a multifaceted initiative that enabled Kyriba to successfully complete the AWS MAP "Mobilize" phase. The following six-step approach was instrumental to this success.

1. Assess and remediate AWS MAP foundation: The AWS MAP criteria checklist evaluates an organization's source and target environments, as well as business and governance readiness for cloud migration. WWT and Kyriba formulated several recommendations and remediations based upon this assessment.

After recommendations were prioritized, WWT performed MAP assessment criteria remediation steps to the satisfaction of both Kyriba and AWS. Of the approximately 300 identified recommendations, WWT immediately addressed the top 20 high-priority items. We addressed the remaining recommendations in future-state designs.

2. Review AWS Well-Architected framework: The AWS Well-Architected Review is a systematic approach for evaluating AWS environments and architectures at the application level. It's based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework: a comprehensive set of design principles and best practices separated into six distinct pillars.

WWT performed a Well-Architected Review on Kyriba's flagship software offering and provided architectural recommendations. Kyriba then incorporated our recommendations into future feature rollouts to better manage cloud-native costs and leverage performance efficiencies.

3. Modernize and migrate database: We jointly determined that Kyriba needed to upgrade existing database infrastructure and perform an analysis of cloud-native databases to determine the best configuration for their migrated data. Kyriba leveraged our expertise to upgrade their existing back-end infrastructure and prepare their cloud-native databases for upcoming migration waves. We repeated this process for each Kyriba region and for each layer of their technology stack.

4. Design landing zone: To provide a baseline for their new multi-account architecture, we recommended Kyriba use AWS Control Tower. We then helped Kyriba set up and administer a multi-account environment that provides ongoing governance with preventive and detective guardrails, plus a dashboard offering single-pane-of-glass visibility for accounts and that facilitates compliance within their AWS Landing Zone.

5. Design and deploy VDI: To accommodate internal growth, Kyriba sought to implement a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution in each region employees were located. Previous VDI deployments had been based in a single region, leading to latency issues as Kyriba expanded its global employee footprint. By placing the VDI solution closer to workers and leveraging additional security measures, WWT helped Kyriba decrease latency, improve workflow efficiency, increase security and minimize hardware expenses.

6. Design and deploy data streaming platform: As their business grew, so did Kyriba's data streaming needs. WWT and Kyriba reviewed current designs and agreed on high- and low-level designs for a new streaming platform that could elastically scale up and down to accommodate variable fluctuations in data traffic. We also helped deploy the initial proof of concept environment where Kyriba developers could test application changes in a sandbox environment.

What's next for Kyriba?

WWT's cloud migration and consulting services enabled Kyriba to quickly complete the Mobilize stage of its AWS migration and confidently embark on the final Migrate & Modernize phase. As a result, Kyriba is in an excellent position to start realizing the many benefits of cloud computing in a secure, governed and scalable environment.

Through close collaboration and leveraging the respective expertise on both teams, Kyriba has achieved a solid conceptual understanding of the components deployed in their newly customized AWS Landing Zone. Kyriba can use the provided architectural framework and governance policy documents as reference as their cloud use cases evolve.

A key outcome of this collaboration is that Kyriba now has a standardized cloud environment that lets it auto-deploy KAPP around the world as the business scales. For example, Kyriba has already expanded the availability KAPP to Canada and EMEA.