Accelerating database modernisation and cloud operations at FinClear
At a glance
FinClear was undertaking a strategic migration of database workloads to AWS while modernising the way its database teams operated. With end-of-life on-premises infrastructure, increasing technical debt, and knowledge concentrated within individuals and teams, the organisation wanted to validate its migration approach, and evolve its operating model by up-skilling their traditional DBA team into Database Reliability Engineers (DBRE), and build the capabilities needed to support future growth in the cloud. Cevo delivered an AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Experienced-Based Accelerator (EBA) focused on cloud-native database operations, migration validation, automation, and operational readiness.
Capabilities
Industry
Financial Services
About FinClear
The FinClear Group is one of Australia’s leading independent technology and infrastructure providers for capital markets. Through its Execution and Clearing Services division, FinClear provides trading and settlement infrastructure for more than 1,400,000 investor accounts across 250 stockbroker and investment advisory firms trading on the ASX, Cboe and International exchanges with services spanning execution, clearing, settlement, HIN sponsorship, corporate actions processing and client cash management.
Business challenge
FinClear’s database environment was facing a number of interconnected challenges as the organisation advanced its cloud migration program. Core infrastructure remained on-premises and was approaching end of life, creating technical debt and increasing operational complexity. At the same time, FinClear had experienced growth and needed a scalable approach to database operations without significantly increasing operational overhead.
The organisation also identified challenges around knowledge sharing and consistency. Critical expertise existed within specific teams and individuals, making it harder to establish repeatable processes. The legacy data warehouse represented a particularly complex migration workload, with limited visibility into some architectural and operational aspects of the platform due to a degree of reliance on a managed service provider.
FinClear recognised that automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), managed services and cloud-native operational practices would be required to support future growth. The organisation wanted to validate migration patterns, test operational readiness, accelerate adoption of AWS services, and help its DBRE team gain hands-on experience operating in the target cloud environment before wider migration activities commenced.
Solution
Establishing a cloud-native operating model
Cevo partnered with FinClear and AWS to define a future-state approach to database engineering and operations aligned with AWS cloud-native principles. The engagement assessed existing operational processes, explored target-state database patterns and architecture, and helped establish a framework for DBRE-led operations in AWS. The focus was on leveraging cloud first, reducing manual effort, improving scalability, and creating consistent operational practices that could support future migration waves.
Accelerating migration through hands-on delivery
As part of the EBA, Cevo worked alongside FinClear’s team to migrate selected non-production database workloads to AWS. The engagement included migration execution, data validation, operational readiness activities, security baseline verification, observability enablement and testing of migration processes. Rather than treating migration as a purely technical exercise, the program was designed to provide practical learning opportunities while validating architecture and operational approaches.
Building operational readiness and resilience
The engagement introduced cloud-native capabilities across monitoring, backup, recovery, observability and operational processes. AWS-native services, including Amazon RDS and Amazon CloudWatch, were used to demonstrate modern operational approaches while helping FinClear validate security, operational and support requirements before broader adoption. Runbooks, knowledge transfer and operational documentation formed an important part of the engagement to ensure FinClear could continue building capability after the accelerator concluded.
Creating alignment across teams
A key aspect of the engagement was bringing leadership, architects and DBRE practitioners together to work through migration objectives, operational challenges and future-state ways of working. This created opportunities to surface organisational friction points, improve alignment and establish a shared understanding of how database operations would evolve as part of FinClear’s AWS journey.
Outcomes
The accelerator delivered both immediate technical outcomes and broader organisational benefits. FinClear successfully migrated three non-production databases to AWS, exceeding the original migration objective. Operational readiness activities were completed, including data validation, security checks, observability enablement and migration testing, helping provide confidence in the broader migration program.
The hands-on approach also helped identify important design and implementation considerations early. The team uncovered architectural decisions that required further evaluation, identified a network throughput issue that may have impacted later migration activities, and surfaced additional operational requirements that could be addressed before larger-scale migrations commenced.
Beyond the technical outcomes, the engagement helped accelerate decision-making, improve collaboration between leadership and engineering teams, and create momentum around new cloud-native ways of working. Participants highlighted the value of bringing teams together with dedicated focus time away from business-as-usual activities, while the DBRE team gained practical exposure to Infrastructure as Code, AWS managed services and modern operational practices.
The engagement established a foundation for FinClear’s ongoing cloud transformation by validating migration approaches, strengthening operational capability and providing a clearer path towards a scalable, automated database operating model in AWS.
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