HCLTech migrates global tire manufacturer's PLM to AWS

One of the world’s largest tire and rubber manufacturers, headquartered in Tokyo, partnered with HCLTech to migrate its PLM system from Dassault’s SaaS cloud to AWS. The migration improved security, resilience and developer productivity through a geographically resilient architecture, disaster recovery capabilities and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), leading to faster provisioning, better transparency and optimized costs.

The Challenge

The client used Dassault’s 3DExperience as their enterprise PLM system, hosted on Dassault’s SaaS Cloud.

The existing setup limited the client’s ability to customize, optimize, or troubleshoot their environment, as all operational control and infrastructure management resided with the Dassault Cloud provider. This created a dependency on Dassault’s support and timelines for any changes or issue resolution
There was a lack of transparency regarding the underlying infrastructure, performance metrics and operational procedures, making it difficult for the client to access detailed information about system health, performance, or security. This hindered informed decision-making, issue forecasting and capacity planning
The PLM application lacked proven resiliency

The Objective

The client aimed to migrate their 3DExperience system from Dassault's SaaS cloud to AWS, addressing the limitations of the existing setup and improving overall efficiency, security and resilience. The key objectives were:

Improve security posture: Leverage cloud native security tools and services to strengthen security measures
Enhance developer productivity: Implement DevOps methodologies, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines using tools like Ansible, Terraform, Jenkins and AWS CodePipeline
Ensure geographical resiliency: Deploy a resilient PLM architecture that can withstand disruptions across different geographic regions

These drivers focused on modernizing the client’s infrastructure, increasing efficiency and ensuring robust security and resiliency.

The Solution

HCLTech led a comprehensive transformation of the client’s PLM system to AWS, ensuring resilience and disaster recovery capabilities. Key components of the solution included:

Cloud transformation: HCLTech migrated the client’s Dassault cloud-hosted PLM to AWS, addressing the business challenges. The transformation leveraged Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate infrastructure creation through a CI/CD pipeline and implemented AWS Cloud Security measures aligned with the client’s security standards
Geographically resilient architecture: HCLTech designed a geographically resilient deployment architecture, increasing application availability even in the event of a disaster
Disaster recovery strategy: A backup and restore strategy was implemented using AWS Backup to meet the client’s recovery point objective (RPO)
Disaster recovery drill: A disaster recovery (DR) drill was conducted to validate the ability to restore the application within the defined recovery time objective (RTO)
Detailed DR guide: A comprehensive disaster recovery guide was developed, detailing pre-requisites, DR drill activities and post-drill rollback steps

This approach improved system reliability and ensured quick recovery in case of disruptions.

The Impact

The migration to AWS significantly impacted the client’s operations, enhancing overall system performance and efficiency. Key improvements included faster infrastructure provisioning, increased availability and optimized costs, all while ensuring greater control and transparency.

Accelerated infrastructure provisioning: Reduced infrastructure provisioning lead time from seven to nine days to mere hours using IaC
Increased availability: Geographically resilient architecture enhanced application availability, even during disasters
On-demand scalability: Resources could be resized in minutes to meet changing demands
Improved transparency and control: The client gained complete visibility and control over the underlying infrastructure, operational procedures and system monitoring
Optimized costs: The pay-as-you-go model provided cost efficiencies, enabling the client to optimize expenses based on usage

AWS services used