Modernising ways of working with cloud-native capabilities
Financial services firm Thredd worked closely with Steamhaus to transform to cloud-native ways of working, streamline its complex network architecture, containerise applications, and modernise with infrastructure as code.
- Adopted Infrastructure as Code using Terraform with GitOps workflows for full version control.
- Migrated to Amazon EKS and containerised apps to simplify and secure network architecture.
- Implemented Amazon RDS, CloudWatch, and PCI-compliant landing zones for security and observability.
- Eliminated config drift with consistent code-based environments and automated CI/CD pipelines.
- Enabled daily deployments, faster scaling, and global expansion without manual infrastructure setup.
Cloud-first: The cure for management headaches
Thredd was using cloud-based services on Amazon Web Services (AWS), but its cloud architecture reflected its on-premises origins. That meant that it wasn’t able to optimise or scale up services as quickly and efficiently as it wanted to.
It operated all of its services as individual applications on top of Windows virtual machines, which was costly and time consuming to manage. Over time, that approach had also led to a large amount of configuration drift, with different parts of the environment deviating from common standards. As a result, Thredd’s engineers also had to invest a lot of hands-on effort into deployment and application testing.
What’s more, Thredd had a complex network topology that required the use of third-party appliances to comply with strict global payment card industry (PCI) security standards. Managing this system was cumbersome and expensive. And it made it hard for engineers to plan network-specific services and infrastructure.
By expanding and modernising its cloud usage, Thredd aimed to become more nimble. It wanted to become a product-led organisation that could roll out new solutions faster to help customers respond more quickly to changing market conditions. Its modernisation goals included adopting DevOps best practices and updating its architecture using infrastructure as code (IaC). “Thredd was always looking to evolve our cloud capability, but there wasn’t always the internal capability in our business to deliver that,” says Nathan Eddy, Thredd’s head of platform delivery. “And the requirements of feeding and watering our infrastructure without any sort of automation was problematic. We made the decision that we couldn’t do this on our own, so we asked AWS about a modern, cloud-first approach and they recommended Steamhaus.”
Delivering modernisation hand in hand with Thredd
From the moment the project began, Thredd knew it had made the right decision by choosing to work with Steamhaus. After struggling in-house to drive modernisation on its own, Thredd now had a partner with the migration, transformation, and engineering skills it needed. Eddy says, “We had people come in who have done this before and could say, ‘This is the right way to do things. Here’s your foundation. This is what good looks like in the cloud. We will bring you up to that point and, in time, you guys can iterate and improve on it.’”
Steamhaus worked hand in hand with Thredd to move the project forward. And both companies shared the same vision for transformation. Engineers from both companies worked together as a single team, with Steamhaus guiding Thredd’s people on the journey to the point at which they could begin managing the new infrastructure on their own.
“Change is difficult for people, and that wasn’t always easy,” says Eddy. “But it was managed and delivered and dealt with in a really empathetic way by the Steamhaus team.”As it worked to modernise Thredd’s cloud ecosystem using infrastructure as code (IaC), Steamhaus also helped Thredd’s engineers to adopt the modern management practices they would need to operate that ecosystem. Another goal was to help Thredd make better use of the full capabilities that the cloud offered, which would eliminate the need to regularly update hardware and reduce the costs associated with that.
Adopting containers and infrastructure as code
Working closely with Thredd’s engineering teams, Steamhaus introduced the use of Terraform to support infrastructure as code. This ensured that every workspace that Thredd created would be built from a single code source. As it worked to transform Thredd’s architecture to become cloud native, Steamhaus also established a GitOps framework to support IaC with DevOps best practices, and created a peer review process for managing infrastructure, network, and software lifecycles.
By moving applications into a containerised environment using Linux on Kubernetes, Steamhaus helped Thredd to simplify its network topology. This involved creating two distinct network structures: a PCI-compliant network and a shared, all-encompassing network.
To reduce operational overhead for Thredd, Steamhaus also introduced additional managed infrastructure services from AWS. These included Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), which provides easy-to-manage relational databases that are optimised for total cost of ownership, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), which streamlines and automates the management of Kubernetes.
“Steamhaus knew the ins and outs and the intricacies of managing container workloads and high-throughput workloads in the AWS cloud,” says Eddy.
Steamhaus also worked to ensure that strong security and PCI compliance were built into the landing zone that it developed for Thredd. “The landing zone is constantly being hardened from a security posture wherever possible, with rules to mitigate what traffic can pass through to where,” Eddy says. “And we’re streaming all the security logs out into CloudWatch and our own observability platforms, so it’s all available in real time. All of that is a critical part of what Steamhaus introduced.”
Trusted by industry leaders to process billions of transactions a year, Thredd is the payments partner you can believe in. Thredd, formerly Global Processing Services, processes billions of transactions every year for global fintechs, digital banks, and finance providers. Founded in 2007 and based in London, they operate across 44 countries. The company offers customers modern, reliable, and scalable technology for B2B payments, consumer payments, digital banking services, card management, fraud services, and more. Using Thredd’s platform has enabled many challenger brands such as Curve and Starling Bank to become world-renowned unicorns, with other companies now well on their way.Location
New York, NYIndustry
Payments
Services
Migrate & ModerniseData & AIShare
On a ‘happy path’ towards even more modernisation
With the modernised foundation that Steamhaus has built, Thredd will be better able to dynamically scale its workloads up and down to meet big changes in demand during busy times for payments—such as on Black Friday. “We don’t need to stand up and provision new infrastructure,” says Eddy. “It can all take care of itself.” However, many of those workloads are still in Thredd’s old environment, so these will need to be migrated to its new cloud infrastructure.
Thredd also plans to further explore how it uses AWS services to save even more time on managing and maintaining its cloud infrastructure. And it will continue to work closely with Steamhaus to achieve its longer-term modernisation goals.
