HERNDON, VA – Karsun Solutions announced it achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Well-Architected Partner Program status. Karsun delivers enterprise modernization solutions to federal civilian government agencies. Its software development, cloud and data solutions teams all deliver on AWS.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps cloud architects build and operate secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient application infrastructures. Based on six pillars, operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability, it provides a consistent way to evaluate architectures and implement designs that will scale with application needs over time. AWS Well-Architected Partners like Karsun can help customers measure the state of their workloads, recommend improvements, and implement best practices.

“Adoption of the AWS Well-Architected principles is part of Karsun’s ongoing commitment to delivering digital architecture built to last,” said Badri Sriraman, Senior Vice President of the Karsun Innovation Center.

Karsun Solutions is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner and AWS Public Sector Partner with AWS Government Competency, AWS Migration Competency and AWS DevOps Competency designations. With AWS Migration Competency status, Karsun’s customers may utilize the company’s access to AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) resources. When applicable, Karsun implements these financial incentives as part of AWS MAP. Its government customers may also leverage Karsun’s extensive experience modernizing large, complex systems with Cloud Runways, a portfolio of purpose-built toolkits optimizing migration to the cloud. Learn more about Karsun’s AWS Practice at https://karsun-llc.com/about/partners/aws/.

About Karsun Solutions

Karsun Solutions modernizes enterprise systems enabling agencies to make the next technological advancement their next opportunity to elevate mission capability. IT solutions from Karsun are tailored to meet agencies’ unique needs and optimize operations. These solutions adapt and stay relevant with current trends while using secure, digital architecture built to last. It is a proven modernization partner whose expertise elevates agency capabilities and ensures every next opportunity is within reach.

Company Contact: marketing@karsun-llc.com

Large-scale, complex transformation projects can be daunting for any enterprise, doubly so for government agencies. At Karsun, we recognize the mission comes first. We consider the technical requirements of our current modernization efforts and the goals and objectives of our agency customers. That includes envisioning every modernization effort as a product, acknowledging the product’s purpose now and its intended use in the future. We call this Modernization for Every Next

Modernization for Every Next includes enhancing our customers’ capabilities throughout our engagement. Our toolkits play a crucial role in that process. These toolkits provide valuable insights into the modernization process, scale to support new objectives, and prepare the way for future initiatives. They ensure our subject matter experts can access the resources they need to introduce best practices and accelerate transformation. Managed and maintained by the Karsun Innovation Center, dedicated practice advocates within the Center ensure toolkits incorporate emerging trends and technologies, utilize proven approaches, and follow industry best practices.

GoLean for Greater Insights

Some Karsun toolkits build comprehensive insights around the development and transformation process itself. As part of a broader change management process, this enables Karsun and its customers to focus on the best practices and approaches for them. It provides a benchmark for future process improvements.

Imagine if you had a dashboard that could tell you if a particular type of testing was more effective, demonstrate the return on investment for implementing a new DevSecOps practice, or simply reveal your team was completing its work faster than ever before. This is the purpose of Karsun’s GoLean platform. This agile platform combines diagnostic and prescriptive metrics with automations proven to accelerate development, testing, and DevSecOps practices. 

We are so confident in this approach that we use this toolkit in-house to identify opportunities to improve our practice. As a result, our software development process was appraised at CMMI v2.0 Level 5 (DEV). At this assessment tier, organizations use data-driven insights to drive their process improvement strategy. Less than a hundred government systems integrators nationwide received appraisal at this level.

Accelerate Migration with Cloud Runways

Another one of our toolkits, Cloud Runways, combines in-depth assessment with repeatable playbooks to accelerate certain migration projects. We begin with an assessment. This includes identifying target applications, determining dependencies, and analyzing available technology. This also includes future state analysis, ensuring the proposed solution can scale with you. Next, we build a “runway” for the project. Each runway uses proven playbooks, tasks, and resources.

We have migrated 40+ applications using these runways. These migrations span use cases from low-code/no-code refactoring to container rehosting. As part of our Modernization for Every Next mindset, we offer runways that help you optimize and build new capabilities as you migrate. For instance, our CI/CD for Windows Apps Runway adds DevOps automations when we migrate Windows apps into AWS ECS or Redhat OpenShift. 

While we offer vendor-agnostic solutions, we are also backed by three AWS competencies. To earn these competencies, Karsun proved the expertise of our migration teams through certifications. We also consistently delivered cloud solutions using AWS best practices for government, migration, and DevOps. 

Design for Every Next

Karsun’s Digital Transformation toolkits are among the most recent additions to our toolkit library. Included in this set of toolkits are our UI/UX toolkits. This pairs our human centered design process with a component library to quickly identify and develop user interfaces as part of transformation efforts.

Building on the lived experiences of application users, we apply a domain driven design approach to UI/UX. That includes engaging technical and domain experts in collaboration from the start. We also build in feedback loops throughout application development. This way, domain driven design allows us to model and identify specific aspects of complex systems. For instance, using domain driven design with one grants management customer, we identified opportunities to build eligibility evaluation, fund distribution and reporting as sub-parts of the grants platform. In the next domain driven design step, we take the model one step further. Each of the platform subparts is comprised of the modular building blocks. These include the user interfaces. 

We can then apply resources from our extensive component library to each of these UI building blocks. The resources in this library utilize proven REACT, Angular and other frameworks to quickly create new interfaces. Additionally, a modularized approach lets our teams extend or enhance capabilities as we receive feedback from users as part of the human centered design process. Throughout the design process we are Modernizing for Every Next.

We found using our toolkits dramatically accelerates the digital transformation process. Our experienced technical teams start engagements with proven tools, playbooks and resources. Our data driven processes further empower these teams to receive feedback, adapt and elevate capabilities as they build. Dive into our Innovation Center toolkits to discover how this process gives your agency the power to Modernize for Every Next. 

Karsun Solutions is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner. After more than a decade of delivering complex cloud solutions, we are experts in optimizing outcomes for our government agency customers. Not only do we deliver superior solutions, but our Karsun Innovation Center (KIC) in-house research and development team constantly experiments, prototypes and validates technology to ensure the implementation of best practices.

We previously shared one way our KIC brings the latest technologies to our teams, leveraging our AWS partnership to enhance Karsun’s proprietary GoLean platform. In the last five years, Karsun continued to expand our toolkit offerings. Through our technology partners, like AWS, our toolkits allow our teams to jumpstart new projects with readymade resources based on best practices.

GoLean Grows Up

As DevOps matured, so too did our approach. The GoLean platform grew and matured alongside it. 

“DevSecOps is a natural evolution of DevOps,” explains Badri Sriraman, Senior Vice President of the Karsun Innovation Center. “In the same way continuous deployment ensures improved functionally for the user, DevSecOps ensures a hardened security infrastructure is implemented for the successful operation of software in production.”

Our GoLean platform not only includes a robust lean measurement toolkit but also incorporates metrics and automates processes to accelerate the adoption of DevSecOps best practices. Our continuous delivery framework enables DevSecOps teams to decouple a feature deployment from its release so that Developers can self-manage the feature, test it in production and incrementally roll it out to users after validation of its operational performance in a shadow data network. Utilizing a low-code open source data pipeline tool enables fine-tuned data synchronization between legacy and modernized components. Additionally, our Duke Test Automation Framework supports continuous testing at scale.

Karsun Adds Cloud Runways

In addition to GoLean, Cloud Runways built on AWS or other cloud services now provide enhancements to our DevSecOps solutions. The toolkits allow teams to not only migrate legacy applications to the cloud but fully optimize them for DevSecOps. The Replatform Runway introduces DevSecOps automation using Terraform, Ansible, and Packer for Windows containers while migrating Windows apps into AWS ECS or Redhat OpenShift.

In addition to the Replatform Runways, we created nine robust runway toolkits based on best practices. This includes extensive experience delivering on AWS. We achieved both an AWS Government Competency and an AWS Migration Competency, validating our ongoing commitment to delivery excellence. A public sector partner, we are committed to helping agencies modernize to meet their mission.

As modernization requirements evolve, so too has our modernization suite. Karsun’s GoLean platform continuously adapts to the latest security and development approaches. Simultaneously we strengthened and enhanced our migration offering via Cloud Runways to optimize for DevSecOps adoption. Ongoing research and development into automation, CI/CD and DevSecOps are one of many ways Karsun ensures our architecture is built to last.

Karsun Solutions offers a portfolio of enterprise modernization solutions to federal and commercial clients. Key among these is Karsun’s cloud migration solution, Cloud Runway. Cloud Runway enables cloud first organizations to migrate legacy systems to the cloud. Karsun recently paired its Innovation Center team with one of their federal customers for a large migration effort using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The Challenge

The customer approached Karsun to move an app to the cloud in order to reduce costs. Critically, the customer also wanted to limit the impact on business lines during the migration. In any of Karsun’s Cloud Solutions offerings, the goal is to leverage the flexibility and agility offered by the cloud to reduce costs. The approach balances private, public, and hybrid cloud options based on economics, functionality, and security. Migration teams use strategic partnerships, like those with AWS, to build cost-effective high-quality solutions.

Beginning the Transformation Process

Karsun’s Cloud Runaway leverages change management best practices. Migration teams discourage customers from building their own platforms in favor of focusing on the assets and processes already available to them. They start by identifying the processes and tools already in use. First, the team implements Karsun’s GoLean methodology. Teams identify daily process performance and health measures prior to migration. These measures are assessed and tracked throughout the migration to observe and mitigate the impact on development teams.

Once teams are actively measuring their performance metrics, tools are paired with similar cloud-native apps. The objective is to support and nurture the processes already in place. Karsun’s partnership with AWS supports the migration team’s efforts to use their own experience to select the most appropriate tools available. Cloud Runway takes a collaborative to this transition. The Karsun Innovation Center pairs one of its teams with the migration team. In bringing this in-house research and development team on board, the migration effort utilizes the latest enterprise architecture solutions.

Combining Karsun’s change management approach with strategic cloud partnerships, the customer was able to quickly migrate to the cloud with limited interruptions to their business lines. Explore our Cloud Solutions page for more including customer case studies. Contact Us to start a conversation with our cloud migration team.