AWS Managed Services Ensure Retirement System is Ready and Available 

Next Step Project Modernizes State Platform for Scalability and Performance Increases

The Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) retirement portal (www.myfrs.com) was once hosted in an off-premises data center and is comprised of a web application framework using n-Tier Java and Aurora Database technologies that integrates with many other critical State of Florida systems. As part of a migration effort to reduce infrastructure complexity and to minimize SBA resource requirements, SBA looked to TekStream to not only migrate the application to AWS, but to provide ongoing monitoring, issue remediation, and day to day management of the applications and cloud infrastructure.  The portal provides resources to its members to manage funds in their Investment and Pension Plans. On an average, more than 200,000 users per month use the portal to manage their financial portfolio and is a go-to resource for many retirees and employees. 

In addition to helping SBA realize a $500,000 savings in cost by moving to AWS from on-premise environments, TekStream has helped them to continuously modernize their applications as well as creating full managed services for Monitoring, established SLA for incidents, establish runbook operations, and perform weekly and monthly maintenance tasks allowing the SBA resources to better focus their time on support the state’s retirement community. 

Technologies Involved

AWS

AWS EC2
AWS Aurora RDS
AWS CloudTrail
AWS CloudWatch
AWS S3
AWS CloudFront
AWS ELB
Redis ElastiCache
AWS Backup Services

TekStream Toolbox

Managed Services Solutions

AWS

Solution Objectives

Manage the scalability and performance of the retirement portal and its infrastructure

Ensure 99.3% uptime commitment or better

Provide 24×7 monitoring and alerting services to ensure access to the environment and portal application for over 200,000 monthly users

Solution Provided

After helping SBA to migrate their portal application to AWS, TekStream continues to modernize the infrastructure and application to take advantage of cloud-native technologies.  TekStream also provides 24 by 7 monitoring and alerting services with established runbooks for remediation when needed and on-demand support with established SLAs to ensure the overall health and security of both the infrastructure and portal application.  TekStream also continues to help SBA improve cost optimization through cloud services and recommendations. 

Key Successes

  • Maintain or exceed 99.3% uptime of environment and portal 
  • Reduce the need for SBA resources to perform weekly and monthly application and server maintenance  
  • Provide 24 x 7 monitoring with established SLAs and 24 x 7 support team to ensure incidents are remediated in a timely manner to meet uptime requirements 

The Florida State Board of Administration

Industry: State Retirement Program

HQ: Tallahassee, FL

Service: 1,000,000 public employees

The State Board of Administration is created by the Florida Constitution as Florida’s principal independent Investment Management Organization. The SBA is primarily responsible for investing the proceeds of the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan, administering the Florida Retirement System Investment Plan, managing the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and running Florida PRIME, as well as investing the proceeds of more than 25 other funds directed to the SBA by the Florida Legislature.

The FRS Pension Plan, also known as the Defined Benefit Plan, is the fifth largest public retirement plan in the U.S.