With proven success in delivering large-scale Cloud migrations, Cornerstone continues to grow and invests in Streaming and Data Analytics to unlock the value of data for their clients. 

Cornerstone Consulting Group Managing Partner, Simon Hornby, says, “Responsible for multiple large-scale and highly successful migration projects, we have developed a unique and robust framework that delivers valuable results against each client’s priorities.”

Speaking about the trends impacting Amazon Web Services in 2023, Hornby says the critical trend that they are investing their energy and resources into is Streaming &Data Analytics.     

Many modern businesses are entrenched with vast amounts of data. Often siloed, unorganized, unclean, and non-compliant. Cornerstone has the knowledge, experience, and capabilities to re-architect the client’s data pipelines, enrich their datasets, and replace their legacy ETL toolset with real-time analytics.

Real-time analytics empowers businesses to resolve issues before they become problems, offering valuable insights by first cleansing, enriching, and optimizing data streaming performance.

When dealing with challenges, the cost is often one of the primary concerns of decision-makers. The ongoing, expanding cost of running their traditional data warehouses is cumbersome; as the data increases, so do the costs. Plus, with the pressures of macroeconomics, businesses are under pressure to find savings right now.

With a deep, specialist focus on AWS, Cornerstone supports its clients in building a highly available system that meets rigorous SLAs. Another critical challenge that clients look up to them to solve is accessing the value that is locked in their data.

With massive data accumulated over many years, businesses often struggle to effectively process and commercialize their data stores – meaning it remains dormant and valueless.

Cornerstone Consulting Group Managing Partner, Suraj Talreja, says “We help companies overcome this hurdle by listening and truly understanding the business and/or customer challenges they are looking to overcome and shaping the solution to deliver those outcomes. In short, we identify and build new revenue streams from existing data, securing new IPs and helping them turn data into an asset.”

Finally, speed is of the essence. Businesses want to get more value faster – and Cornerstone makes this happen by helping them move from end-of-day batch processing to real-time streaming. 

This process starts with migration to Cloud, which is where Cornerstone is the specialist.

“We exist to help clients kick-start their journey to Cloud, providing the dedicated support and expertise to be able to execute their Cloud migration goals with confidence. We have a history of successfully delivering projects on time and on budget – working at pace to achieve the client’s timeframes without compromising on the required quality or detail. Given our rich experience, our experts can give clients the reliability and predictability of their migration project running as smoothly as possible,” says Suraj.

Cornerstone puts a significant focus on the assessment phase of a project to understand and scope the client’s current landscape and application workloads to build a targeted solution based on AWS’s Well-Architected Framework. This covers all pillars of measurable success, from performance efficiency to cost optimization.

Citing case studies, Hornby says that in 2022, Cornerstone was asked by a market-leading Danish SaaS company to undertake its migration program. This involved re-platforming and rehosting applications to AWS to migrate all on-prem and self-managed Apache Kafka clusters to Amazon MSK. This migration was a critical deliverable in the overall migration of their data center assets to AWS and was undertaken with a sharp eye on the business requirements and support from AWS.

The core product had a loosely coupled, highly distributed architecture with Apache Kafka as the messaging platform processing more than 5000 messages/sec between its core services. One key workstream was migrating the Apache Kafka clusters from on-prem to the Amazon MSK service in two AWS regions. Cornerstone successfully executed this migration without downtime by leveraging the MirrorMaker2 (MM2) replication engine.

The Danish SaaS company is now positioned to leverage the benefits of running its applications in AWS, like auto-scaling, increased agility, and reduced total cost.

Regarding the numerous companies vying for the top position, Hornby says,  “We exist to provide a very personal approach to every project. We have nurtured and developed a team of exceptional, highly-skilled experts who are true specialists in this field. A team who loves what they do, are obsessed with migrations and data, and are passionate about working with clients to deliver incredible results.”

This approach sets them apart as honest, collaborative, and dedicated.

They work backward from their client’s needs and priorities so that they have clear and accurate information to design the solutions that will deliver wholly against the objectives. Another of their biggest differentiators is their deep focus on AWS.

“We take an ‘automation first’ approach for any solutions we deliver for our clients and have developed tools to accelerate migrations. One of the tools we recently developed is a ‘Kafka Replication Plugin’ built on the MM2 replication engine and leveraging the Amazon MSK Connect platform,” adds Suraj.

2023 has been about positioning themselves for growth. They have invested a lot of time, energy, and thought into developing their brand positioning and web presence to enable audiences to understand their unique value proposition and learn how they can help bring measurable value through migration and data analytics solutions.

“Part of our growth trajectory has involved expanding our team at a pace to deliver against the breadth and complexity of client needs around the globe. Leveraging our global network, we have also built out our footprint in India to harness the specialist talent and expertise centered in this location,” says Hornby.