Transforming Member Management: How Svensk Dysmeliförening Enhanced Efficiency and Security with AWS
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Svensk Dysmeliförening, a national non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of individuals with dysmelia and their families, faced significant challenges with its outdated member management system. Originally built and maintained by a single member on a private computer, the system suffered from a cumbersome manual backup process and limited accessibility for other contributors. To overcome these issues, Svensk Dysmeliförening partnered with Epical to transform their system using Amazon Web Services (AWS). The new setup, leveraging AWS’s robust security features and serverless architecture, not only improved data handling and accessibility but also opened the door for broader development support. This strategic overhaul has resulted in a more resilient, cost-effective, and scalable solution, ensuring the organization can continue its vital work with greater efficiency and security.
Challenge Overview
- Svensk Dysmeliförening had a member management system that had several challenges .
- Built and maintained by a single member in the organization.
- Hosted on the developer’s private computer.
- Manual backup process of the data
- Hard/impossible for others to contribute.
Solution Overview
Epical was brought in to rebuild the system natively on Amazon Web Services. An AWS account was setup with standard security services.
To name a few: AWS CloudTrail for recording all actions taking within the AWS account, AWS GuardDuty for threat detection and AWS Security Hub for security best practices.
The data was migrated from a Microsoft Access database to AWS Aurora Serverless v2, a relational database service. The database instance is Serverless and scales up and down with usage. AWS Backup was used to setup backups daily. Alarms were added for backup failures.
For interaction with the database, we implemented query specific AWS Lambda Functions. Each Lambda Function serves a specific purpose such as “list members”. These Lambda Functions were made accessible via an AWS API Gateway, which provides a reliable interface for REST API requests, and a AWS CloudFront Distribution, which ensures fast and secure content delivery. Access to the Rest API was restricted using AWS Cognito, a login system. To access resources a user needs to login.
AWS is very popular among developers. The rebuild on AWS increases the number of developers who potentially could assist with development of the system from one to millions.
Cost is crucial for Svensk Dysmeliförening; they do not want any surprises on their AWS bill. That's why our forecasting approach at Epical is essential. We focus on setting budgets, forecasting, and cost alerts to ensure financial predictability and control. We created two types of cost anomaly subscriptions: one daily and one immediate. The daily subscription sends an email to the customer-specific email address. The immediate subscription is integrated with AWS SNS, which triggers an event automatically sent to our mutual Slack channel, allowing us to discuss the cost increase promptly. Additionally, each account has a AWS budget set up, which triggers an email to a customer-specific email address if the budget threshold is close to being exceeded or has been exceeded.
The Outcome
- Administration of AWS handled by an AWS partner.
- Improved handling of data using Amazon RDS and AWS Backup
- Clean rebuild of the service to rely on native AWS services using best practices.
- Low costs using Serverless services
- High uptime using Serverless services
Customer Introduction
Svensk Dysmeliförening is a nationwide non-profit organization that aims to improve the care and life quality for individuals with dysmelia and their families, providing comprehensive support to foster security in daily life. Svensk Dysmeliförening continuously works towards these goals through budgeted activities, regular meetings, and active involvement in various roles such as financial oversight, grant applications, and camp planning. The association's largest activity is organizing camps, including a summer family camp with 400-500 participants, a winter family camp with 100-200 participants, and a youth camp for 20-30 members.