The Challenge

Rising’s application portfolio had evolved over many years to support the changing needs of the business. As the environment grew, it included a combination of established .NET Framework workloads, newer cloud services, varied deployment practices, and multiple operational tools.

Rising identified an opportunity to standardize architecture and delivery patterns, improve observability across the environment, and further strengthen its high-availability and disaster-recovery capabilities. The organization also wanted to apply a more structured approach to cloud cost management as AWS usage expanded.

Rather than build and recruit every specialized cloud discipline internally, Rising chose to supplement its team with embedded expertise across cloud architecture, application modernization, DevOps, observability, database administration, and FinOps. The goal was to accelerate modernization while building the internal knowledge and processes needed to operate the environment independently over time.

The Solution

Through its AiR+ program, UTurn forward-deployed a multidisciplinary AWS team alongside Rising’s engineers. Working under a single ongoing engagement, the team focused on four connected priorities: modernizing applications, automating delivery, strengthening operations, and optimizing cloud investment.

Modernize

UTurn modernized legacy .NET Framework workloads using containerized Amazon Elastic Container Service architectures and serverless AWS Lambda services. The work was guided by the AWS Well-Architected Framework and a library of standardized patterns, replacing one-off implementations with more consistent, maintainable, and scalable designs.

Automate

UTurn automated the delivery process from infrastructure provisioning through application deployment. Terraform infrastructure as code and a unified continuous integration and continuous delivery process were implemented across deployment targets, including legacy web services, containerized applications, and serverless workloads. This replaced manual release processes with a more consistent and repeatable delivery model.

Operate

UTurn centralized logging and alerting across AWS, application, database, and third-party sources, giving the team a more complete and consistent view of system health. This improved the team’s ability to detect issues proactively and investigate incidents across previously disconnected systems.

High availability was strengthened through multi-Availability Zone architecture and AWS managed services across the application, database, and storage tiers. Backup and disaster recovery processes were also designed and validated against Rising’s defined recovery point and recovery time objectives, replacing assumed recovery capability with a tested recovery posture.

Optimize 

UTurn established an ongoing FinOps practice to keep cloud investment aligned with actual consumption. The team implemented Savings Plan and Reserved Instance strategies, continuous resource right-sizing, and cost-driven architectural improvements.

Throughout the engagement, UTurn also worked alongside Rising’s employees to transfer knowledge and develop internal capability. As the team gained experience with the new architecture, tooling, and processes, routine operations, provisioning, and incident investigation were progressively transitioned back in-house.

“UTurn enables our team to focus on their areas of expertise while providing the tools and structure to improve speed and quality at the same time.”

Business and Operational Results

The engagement delivered meaningful improvements across application modernization, deployment consistency, operational resilience, cost management, and internal enablement:

• Modernized legacy .NET Framework workloads using containerized and serverless architectures, reducing operational overhead and improving scalability.

• Automated deployments through unified continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines, creating a standardized and repeatable release process across legacy and modern workloads.

• Centralized logging and alerting across AWS, application, database, and third-party sources, improving visibility and enabling more proactive issue detection.

• Established a validated disaster recovery posture with defined recovery point and recovery time objectives, establishing validated recovery procedures aligned with defined recovery objectives.

• Improved cloud cost management through Savings Plan and Reserved Instance strategies, continuous right-sizing, and cost-driven architectural decisions.

• Standardized architecture and delivery patterns, enabling new workloads to follow reusable workflows.

• Built Rising’s internal capabilities so its team could independently manage routine operations, provisioning, and incident investigation.

Why UTurn

Rising chose UTurn for the breadth of expertise available through a single partner relationship. Rather than coordinating separate vendors for cloud architecture, .NET application modernization, SQL Server administration, DevOps automation, observability, and cost management, Rising gained access to all of these disciplines through one integrated engagement.

UTurn’s AiR+ model combined continuous architectural leadership, hands-on engineering delivery, FinOps guidance, and operational support under a single agreement. This allowed Rising to address modernization, reliability, automation, and cost management as connected priorities rather than separate initiatives.

UTurn’s deep AWS expertise, grounded in the AWS Well-Architected Framework, was paired with a deliberate focus on knowledge transfer and team enablement. As a result, Rising could modernize at pace while developing the internal capabilities required to sustain and extend the work independently.

The FinOps component helped Rising improve the efficiency of its cloud investment by continuously identifying cost-management and optimization opportunities.