Re-Engineering of a Back-Office Application into the AWS Cloud using Serverless Components with Amazon Cognito and Active Directory Accessibility

Overview

CoreLogic is the largest provider of property information, analytics and property-related risk management services in Australia and New Zealand.

They are the market leaders for commercial property data for capital city CBD markets across Australia, with thousands of properties physically inspected every year to make up the subscription product known as Cityscope.

A number of internal systems have been built over the years to allow employees to access this data to ensure it is kept up to date and accurate. Industry Data were employed to re-engineer a back-office application dedicated to the access and maintenance of this critical data. A new serverless web application was developed providing internal employees with web access to their data 24 hours a day, whilst enjoying the benefits of native elasticity and tracking to ensure the system was always available and mistakes or changes could be undone. Industry Data also integrated Amazon Cognito and Active Directory within the AWS platform to ensure that the transition for internal employees was seamless and original credentials could be maintained.

Take a look at the CoreLogic website to learn more about what they do: corelogic.com.au

Business Challenges

  • Back-office system was on legacy technology - sporadic back ups and little roll-back capability added risk to the solution
  • Users were limited to how many could use the system at one time, and each had to be logged on to the corporate network to gain access
  • Little ability to change or improve functionality due to risk of system failure
  • Little logging, auditing and tracking of changes by user was available
  • System was limited in its data validation checking, which meant additional manual review was required prior to a release to the customer facing product

"I would have no hesitation in recommending the Industry Data team. Their level of professionalism is extremely high and their ability to deal in the technical while communicating with the not-so-technical stakeholders, makes working with them a smooth experience. I would have no hesitation in engaging Industry Data again. In fact I look forward to when that time comes.”

Brett Scott, CoreLogic

Project Outcomes

A front-end web application was developed using React JS, and hosted on a serverless environment in AWS with the following benefits:

  • Solution elastically scales to manage varying levels of access and data changes, as well as the number of concurrent users
  • Users access the solution from anywhere in the world, and on any device using a web browser and their Active Directory credentials
  • Full traceability of all user activity is logged for auditing and rollback
  • Front end application allows for native, built in validation of data therfore negating further manual checks and balances
  • AWS CloudFront ensures that the application data is cached close to the user avoiding any delays or application downtime
  • Risk of system failure and data loss is removed as solution is continually backed up
  • Removal of back-end servers, reduction in manual data checks, and removal of risk of system failure all add to the bottom line

The Industry Data Solution

Users originally accessed and updated the data via an MS Access form, logging into the corporate network using their Active Directory credentials. A new front end web application was developed using React JS and hosted as a static website in S3. AWS CloudFront and Route 53 were used to host and route traffic, ensuring that the application and latest data was readily available through edge location caching.

AWS Cognito and Active DIrectory were utilised to seamlessly transition employee credentials to the cloud for online access to the new environment. API Gateway coupled with Lambda completed the serverless portion of the solution, directing data updates to and from the back-end RDS server hosting a PostgreSQL database.

The AWS services utilised within this solution were: Amazon S3 / Amazon CloudFront / Amazon Route53 / Amazon API Gateway / AWS Lambda / Amazon Cognito / Amazon Active Directory / Amazon RDS

The AWS architecture developed for this solution is documented below. For more information on Amazon Cognito and Active Directory for web and mobile apps in AWS visit: AWS Blog - ADFS Federation for your Web Application

Architecture diagram for an AWS serverless record matching solution