Cloud Modernisation Project for a Major Energy Trader
The Client
A large integrated energy provider and trader operating across generation and supply markets with a multi-million customer base.
Their trading platform is a mission-critical business application used for making swift trading and risk decisions across the business.
The Challenge
The client’s trading platform presented a combination of operational and technical risk that constrained growth and increased operational overhead:
Outdated & Complex Architecture
Platform architecture was difficult to maintain, didn’t follow cloud best practices, and presented limited scalability.
Compliance & Security Concerns
The platform needed consistent controls and automated processes to meet governance and compliance requirements.
Resource Inefficiencies
Many operational processes were manual and time consuming, increasing mean time to recovery and support effort.
Patching Downtime Risk
Manual patching workflows caused frequent disruption and risked missing business SLAs.
Our Approach
We embedded cloud best practices, automation, and up-skilling to drive long-term cloud maturity. Our phased playbook included:
Cloud Readiness
Assessed cloud maturity, identified operational gaps, and proposed a phased migration approach and escalation paths for issues.
Modernising DevOps
Introduced infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD to reduce deployment bottlenecks and improve maintainability.
Automation
Built automated workflows for patching, cloning, testing, and recovery to reduce manual toil.
Disaster Recovery & Cost Optimisation
Implemented snapshot and recovery workflows, cost visibility, and intelligent workload scheduling to reduce spend and risk.
Our Solution
Following the engagement, four automated capabilities were delivered and integrated into the platform to reduce downtime, speed recovery, and streamline operations.
Self-healing
We implemented an event-driven self-healing layer that:
Continuously monitors platform services and detects failures in real-time
Triggers pre-approved remediation workflows automatically
Selects fixes from a script library to ensure safe, repeatable recovery
Reduces human error and accelerates root-cause remediation
Significantly reduces incident escalation and support troubleshooting time
EC2 Automation
To remove risky, manual patching processes we built an automated clone-and-patch workflow that:
Clones a live stack into an isolated test environment, applies patches and updates, and runs full test suites before any production change
Enables instant rollback to the prior stable state if issues arise
Eliminates the need for duplicate always-on redundant stacks, saving on infrastructure and storage costs
Delivers near-zero-impact patching with minimal user disruption
EC2 High Availability
We implemented an automated recovery workflow that:
Detects server/service failures and triggers a pre-approved recovery process.
Restores the latest backups, reconfigures test environments, and validates recovered services.
Provides a fast, reliable fallback during outages to reduce financial and operational risk.
Reduces manual runbooks, while enabling a semi-automated, auditable recovery approval path.
Blue/Green
To further minimise patch risk, we introduced a blue/green deployment strategy:
Applies updates to a replaceable “green” stack while the “blue” stack remains live.
Uses load balancing and traffic shifting to switch safely after full testing.
Enables instant rollback without complex backup restores.
Treats multi-server patching as replaceable environment swaps to reduce compatibility risks.
Our Impact
Another key element of our engagement was empowering EDF’s technical teams. Instead of just delivering solutions, we worked side-by-side with engineers, transferring Cloud skills and DevOps best practices. This included:
Daily collaboration via stand-up calls kept the engagement on track and ensured knowledge transfer
Interactive workshops accelerated adoption of cloud services and automation tools
Security and compliance best-practice sessions helped the client meet governance standards
Our Results
The automated solutions remain active in production and continue to support day-to-day operations:
~99.9% platform availability with automated high-availability and self-healing workflows
Faster deployment cycles using infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD
~50% reduction in patching-related downtime through clone-and-patch and blue/green approaches
Up-skilled internal team with confidence to manage cloud operations moving forward and lower operational overhead
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