McGraw-Hill Education, a multi-billion-dollar publishing company, moved to digital on company-owned data centers, and now are migrating to AWS. This session details their two-year migration plan for the eventual global deployment of all MHE platforms on AWS. Learn about the business drivers as well as the technical and business challenges they have faced and overcome to date.

1. McGraw-Hill Education: From US Brick and
Mortar to Global in a Little under Two Years
Shane Shelton, McGraw-Hill Education
© 2013 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified, or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

2. McGraw-Hill Education (MHE) Overview
McGraw-Hill Education
– $2.5 B education company (print and digital)
– Recently divested from McGraw-Hill Companies
– Bulk of revenue from print business

3. Business Side

4. Why Move to the Cloud?
Key Business Drivers
– Need for global delivery and better user experience
– Cost reduction over current model*
– Ability to streamline processes for agile development and
continuous integration
– More flexibility then brick & mortar model
– Automation of everything

5. Out of All the Cloud Providers out There
Today, Why Did We Choose Amazon?
Why AWS?
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Data centers where we needed them (AWS and Datapipe)
One of the most mature providers
Fit majority of needs*
Ability to ride demand curve (Auto Scaling = cost savings)
Superior support
Listens to their customers
Overall ecosystem is strongest

6. Is the Cloud Cheaper?
Cost Analysis Is Very Important
– Made sense in our current operating model
– Realistic numbers = More convincing argument
– Sometimes cost savings aren’t everything (don’t tell my CFO I
said this)
– Won’t always make financial sense, so do your homework

7. Biggest Business Challenges?
Convincing a Large Organization to Move to AWS
Is Hard
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Cloud is still relatively new
Legacy applications in AWS is difficult
Operational support (monitoring, governance, policy/procedure)
Financials
Finding people

8. Technical Side

9. We Have to Do What With Legacy
Applications?
Proceed with Caution; This Could Get Nasty
– Make sure you know what you have and a plan on how it will
work in AWS
– Don’t be afraid to try different configurations before you settle on
what you want to move forward with. Architecture changes will
need to happen.
– You don’t have to solve every problem before launch
– For the love of God, test everything thoroughly before go-live

10. A Shift in Mindset
Developers and Architects Need to Work Within
the Constraints of AWS
– Make sure to follow AWS best practices when deploying software
on their platform or you’ll be sorry
– AWS is the same infrastructure you use today, and it can and
will fail; make sure your architecture and applications can
withstand it

11. Our Biggest Challenges
Difficult Situations Encountered
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Moving away from F5s to ELBs
Security approvals
Dependency on Oracle products
Not being in control of everything (IaaS instead of in-house)
Monitoring

12. MHE Global Deployment Architecture
DataPipe N. Virginia
DataPipe San Jose
AWS Direct Connect
AWS Direct Connect
US East
Amazon CloudFront
US West (N. Cali)
Internet
MHE
Singapore
Amazon CloudFront
Ireland
AWS Direct Connect
AWS Direct Connect
DataPipe Singapore
DataPipe UK

13. MHE Connect’s Biggest Technical Challenges
What Were the Most Difficult Hurdles to Overcome?
– ELB functionality
• Limited in what it is capable of doing when compared to internal F5s
– Oracle Coherence for session management/caching
• Was not made for the cloud; strict latency rules
• Can only deploy across a single AZ; won’t scale multiple AZs
– Auto Scaling
• Using Weblogic and Coherence takes a lot longer to scale up a new
server than expected (6-7 minutes)
• Takes a really long time to automate things when you’re starting from
scratch, especially when using proprietary software

14. Road Map
When Will We Be Done?
– 2013
• Move first tier 1 application to AWS
– 2014
• Move 90% of remaining tier 1 applications to AWS
• Deploy to first global region
• Multiregion architecture enable with failover capability
– 2015
• Finish remaining legacy applications moves
• Full global rollout completed with multiregion support for all tier 1
applications

15. Partnership with AWS Going Forward
AWS Is a True Partner
– As AWS strengthens their services and infrastructure, our
products get better
– AWS listens to their customers
– Competitive pricing
– Excellent support

16. Q&A

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