How Purpose Unlimited Cut Cloud Costs by 75% via AWS Modernization

At a Glance

Industry: Financial Services

Goal: Migrate from Heroku to AWS in under 60 days to improve scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency

Services & Technologies:

OpsGuru Services: Cloud Migration & Modernization, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD Implementation, Observability Enablement, Knowledge Transfer

Tooling: Amazon ECS with Fargate, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon MQ, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Secrets Manager, Terraform, Terragrunt, CircleCI, Cursor

Outcomes

• ~75% projected reduction in annual cloud spend

• Migration completed in under 60 days

• 99.9% reported platform availability

• 100% infrastructure managed as code

• Greater team autonomy and faster delivery velocity

Background

Purpose Unlimited is a Canadian financial services firm with a mission to deliver holistic financial tools and experiences that help individuals and businesses take control of their financial futures. Its businesses span asset and wealth management, as well as small business financing, assisting clients to leverage technologies to overcome the friction commonly faced in financial operations. 

Their wealth-as-a-service and Financial Operating System (FinOS) depend upon a platform that must scale reliably, perform efficiently, and empower internal teams, all while remaining cost-effective. Historically hosted on Heroku, Purpose sought to transition to AWS to gain more control over its infrastructure and reduce its reliance on expensive, monolithic services.

The Challenge

Purpose approached the migration with clear business priorities: 

• Reduce infrastructure costs

• Improve reliability and operational visibility

• Enable faster innovation for internal teams

With a Heroku renewal deadline approaching, they sought a partner who could execute quickly while delivering a modern cloud foundation to support long-term growth. 

Navigating Complexity Beneath the Surface

While their internal team was deeply familiar with the application itself, they were seeking an experienced AWS partner to help de-risk the migration and accelerate delivery. At first glance, the platform seemed straightforward - five Ruby on Rails services, a database migration, and a clear downtime window. 

As the team delved deeper, several previously hidden complexities emerged. Each production workload included over 200 environment variables and multiple third-party integrations.

Modernization Beyond Migration

At the same time, the team was advancing its approach to testing, observability, and operations. They recognized the opportunity to not only replatform but also strengthen reliability by improving observability and resilience across the stack. 

To meet both their timeline and modernization goals, Purpose needed a partner who could help accelerate that transformation while keeping their team closely involved and empowered throughout the process.

Our Solution

OpsGuru engaged with Purpose to design and implement a migration strategy rooted in the AWS Well-Architected Framework, prioritizing simplicity, cost efficiency, and automation.

Key pillars of the solution included:

• A fully managed AWS platform

• Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD pipelines

• Streamlined configuration management

• Enhanced observability

• Hands-on enablement and documentation

Improved Scalability, Availability, and Cost Efficiency: The platform was re-architected using fully managed AWS services, including Amazon ECS with Fargate, Amazon RDS for Postgres, Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon MQ. It gave Purpose full ownership and control of their infrastructure and eliminated the complexities of a hybrid environment.

Faster, More Reliable Application Delivery: All infrastructure was defined using Terraform and Terragrunt to enable consistent, repeatable environments. CI/CD pipelines were implemented in CircleCI and integrated into Purpose’s source control, enabling faster application delivery and reducing operational overhead.

Simplified and Secure Configuration Management: To address the complexities and configuration challenges introduced by nearly 200 environment variables per workload, the team leveraged Cursor to design and implement migration scripts quickly, moving the environment variables into AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store and AWS Secrets Manager. 

Greater Operational Visibility and Responsiveness: Observability was strengthened by integrating CloudWatch with Elastic Cloud, enabling ECS Container Insights, and configuring Slack-based alerting. Sustained Operational Ownership for Internal Teams: The engagement concluded with detailed documentation, architectural diagrams, and recorded knowledge transfer sessions, ensuring Purpose’s internal team could confidently manage and scale their new platform.

The Results

Leveraging OpsGuru’s expertise, Purpose now operates on a scalable, secure, and fully automated AWS foundation. The platform is built for growth, with modern deployment practices and observability tools that provide the engineering team with clear insight into system behaviour and faster resolution paths when issues arise. 

• Significant Cost Reduction: Following the migration, Purpose achieved a 75% reduction in annual cloud spend.

• Improved Platform Reliability: The platform now operates with 99.9% availability, supported by modern observability and alerting practices.

• Operational Consistency at Scale: 100% of infrastructure is managed as code, reducing configuration drift and improving repeatability across environments.

Increased Team Autonomy and Velocity

With infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and centralized secret management in place, Purpose is positioned to move faster while maintaining reliability and control. Just as importantly, the internal team is equipped to operate and evolve the environment independently, supported by architectural documentation, hands-on training, and best practices shared throughout the engagement.

Positioned for Ongoing Innovation

With the migration successfully completed, Purpose is now positioned to build on its AWS foundation. OpsGuru’s delivery unlocked new operational flexibility, and the strong working relationship built throughout the project opens the door for future enhancements, including fine-tuning compute cost efficiency and exploring deeper infrastructure customization.