About the customer

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) a critical agency spread among several states and the District of Columbia, is responsible for training law enforcement professionals across various federal, state, local and tribal agencies. FLETC's mission is to provide high-quality training to ensure law enforcement officers are prepared to protect and serve effectively. With a wide range of training programs and a large number of trainees, FLETC relies heavily on robust and scalable IT infrastructure to support its operations.

Customer challenge

FLETC’s core financial system was hosted in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data center. Like many systems with traditional on-premise hosting, it faced challenges in maintaining and scaling the existing IT infrastructure. Its legacy systems were becoming increasingly difficult to manage, leading to inefficiencies and higher operational costs. Additionally, DHS mandated the modernization of financial systems and migration to the cloud to improve service delivery, enhance security measures and provide better disaster recovery capabilities. The existing infrastructure also struggled to meet the growing demands for scalability and flexibility, prompting FLETC to consider a comprehensive cloud migration strategy.

Partner solution

FLETC contracted with CGI to lead the migration to AWS, demonstrating a strong partnership and leveraging CGI's expertise with cloud migration. CGI leveraged its Cloud Migration Framework to support FLETC's migration of applications and services to AWS. 

The framework is a comprehensive and adaptable methodology designed to facilitate the efficient and secure migration of applications and services to the cloud. It consists of seven key steps: 

  1. Assessing the current environment and understanding migration goals
  2. Planning the migration with a detailed cloud architecture design
  3. Onboarding by provisioning cloud accounts and establishing governance models
  4. Deploying and testing applications
  5. Implementing comprehensive security controls and achieving Authority to Operate (ATO)
  6. Transitioning to a steady state with ongoing management and optimization of the cloud environment
  7. Managing and operating the cloud environment in steady state

CGI worked with FLETC to design an effective cloud architecture for the agency’s financial system, following CGI’s Cloud Migration Framework and AWS’s Well-Architected Framework. CGI deployed core AWS fundamental services including:

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM)
  • Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
  • Elastic Block Store (EBS)
  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
  • Application Load Balancer (ALB)

The solution included a comprehensive discovery and analysis of existing systems to identify areas for optimization. Modernization and architecture changes were implemented to take full advantage of cloud features. Additionally, CGI re-architected FLETC’s disaster recovery solution, providing more robust capabilities.

Other key AWS services CGI incorporated into the solution include:

  • DMS: Enables quick and real-time data migration and synchronization between on-premise and cloud environments.
  • Relational Database Service (RDS): Simplifies database management and reduced Database Administrator (DBA) efforts by 50%.
  • CloudWatch: Provides comprehensive monitoring and logging for better operational insights.
  • CloudTrail: Ensures compliance and enhanced security through detailed audit trails.
  • GuardDuty: Quickly implement threat detection and security monitoring for the cloud environment.
  • AWS Backups: Automated backup processes to ensure data protection and recovery.
  • AWS Simple Email Service (SES): Provides a reliable and scalable email service to meet FLETC’s requirements in the cloud.
  • Transit Gateway: Simplifies network management and connectivity to CGI’s managed services, which provides essential operational and security services to meet FLETC’s hosting requirements.
  • Direct Connect: Provides secure and reliable connectivity with necessary bandwidth to connect FLETC users on the DHS network to AWS.

Result and benefits

The migration of FLETC’s core financial system to AWS resulted in several improvements across architecture, cost and security. By leveraging AWS regions and implementing a new disaster recovery solution, FLETC achieved a 100% improvement in recovery times. The new cloud environment offers improved governance, security, and compliance, ensuring that FLETC's IT infrastructure met federal standards. 

The migration also results in an estimated 20% monthly cost savings compared to existing hosting costs by right-sizing VMs, streamlining operations, and scheduling non-prod environments to shut down on a schedule. Furthermore, the cloud environment increases availability, scalability, and flexibility, allowing FLETC to adapt to future technology needs. Additionally, the cloud migration was the first major step as part of FLETC’s modernization strategy for their core financial system. With the migration to AWS, FLETC is well-positioned for their next phase to upgrade their application and re-architect to a containerized architecture.

Added value for FLETC:

  • Increased availability through added fault tolerance using availability zones and added redundancy at the application and database tiers.
  • Improved disaster recovery by leveraging AWS cloud native services, resulting a successful DR recovery in 1.5 hours
  • Replatformed FLETC’s Oracle database to RDS, resulting in a 50% decrease in DBA level of effort.
  • Leveraged DMS to migrate data, allowing real-time sync between on-premise and the cloud.
  • Leveraged CGI’s Managed Cloud Services to expand upon the AWS services to meet operational and security requirements based on NIST 800-53 Moderate controls for FLETC based on the Shared Responsibility Model.
  • Implemented the entire infrastructure as code for repeatable and quick deployment.
  • Routed internet connectivity through the DHS trusted internet connection (TIC) to ensure a strong security posture.
  • Improved scalability and elasticity by leveraging elastic compute cloud (EC2) technology.
  • Connected into the DHS Direct Connect for reliable connectivity, bandwidth and increased security.

About the partner

CGI is a leading provider of cloud-based solutions with extensive experience in the federal sector. They were one of the first large company to achieve FedRAMP certification for their CGI Public Sector Cloud. CGI also manages FedRAMP authorized SaaS offerings for their Momentum Financials Application, and Sunflower Asset Management Applications.  

CGI offers a full spectrum of Cloud Services including Managed Cloud Services, Cloud Security, Cloud Strategy, Assessment & Migration, and Consulting.

With a proven track record of successful cloud migrations, CGI is well-equipped to support federal agencies in their IT modernization efforts.