Many businesses know that AWS is the right choice for their project but lack the time or resources to get started. Getting over this initial hump can be tricky, but the rewards are well worth the effort. 

The Instant Group (TIG) was one such business. They wanted to build a platform on AWS for booking flexible workspaces, but needed their engineering team to focus on adding business value rather than building the platform itself. They were looking for a trusted partner to fast-track the deployment while they scaled up their in-house capabilities, and this is where we came in. 

Following the principles of the AWS Well Architected Framework, we built a greenfield AWS environment for TIG’s platform. We also created a set of patterns for future engineers to follow, setting the company up for an easy transition to in-house management. Here’s how we did it, and what our AWS team can do for you. 

 

The client 

With the nature of work changing at a dizzying pace, The Instant Group provides a sense of stability to thousands of companies around the world. They offer a variety of services including digital listing, flexible real estate booking, corporate estate consultancy, market leading sustainability practice, portfolio management, managed office solutions and data businesses. In 2023 alone, they generated £550m of demand in the global flexible office real estate market. 

TIG also owns a number of pure digital businesses and are experts in digital search, conversion and data. They dominate this market with good reason, so we were thrilled at the prospect of working with them. 

The problem

When TIG approached us, they were at a major crossroads in their technology strategy. They were about to begin building a category-defining platform to help employees find places to work, and to help businesses learn about how their employees engage. It would be the world’s biggest flex marketplace, connecting businesses and their employees to over 40,000 flexible working locations across 170 countries and 5,500 cities. 

The TIG team were already experts in AWS, having built high velocity, high scale API-driven platforms for ecommerce offerings. However, building this new platform would create some unique challenges. TIG were keen to get to an advanced state of deployment as quickly as possible, meaning there was an added time pressure compared to their previous AWS projects. 

Next, there was the challenging nature of the task itself. With the platform covering so many locations, consolidating bookings into a single system would require a lot of care and attention. This was made more complex by TIG’s structure as the group frequently acquires new companies, and each of these would need their own autonomous account. Security would also be a major concern as the new platform would be processing a lot of sensitive information.  

Finally, TIG were keen to align their teams to standard infrastructure-as-code patterns that would allow them to start deploying workloads in a consistent way as soon as possible. This meant finding a partner who would not only help to build the platform, but  create a clear set of guidelines for its use too.    

 

Why The Instant Group chose Daemon

Daemon has worked extensively with AWS, building a reputation as one of the most reliable AWS partners in the industry. We have a special status as an AWS Advanced Partner, meaning that we’re trusted by AWS to provide cloud migrations and other services on their behalf. Under this banner, we’ve helped everyone from tech companies to car dealerships take advantage of the AWS platform. 

This reputation was a big part of TIG’s decision, but it wasn’t the only factor. As we mentioned earlier, enablement was a priority, and this is another area where Daemon excels. We take a collaborative approach to engineering, working alongside our clients to build a solution and to teach them how to maintain it after we’re gone. This is known as our Enable strategy, and it made us the natural choice for TIG. 

Read more about our collaborative approach to engineering:

 

How Daemon helped

As with most of our projects, we began with a discovery phase. We gathered as much information as possible, allowing us to map out exactly what needed to be done and how long we had to do it. We found that we would have around five weeks to get the AWS environment ready for TIG’s engineering team. This was a tight deadline, but one we were confident we could meet. 

Our first job was to build a landing zone suitable for TIGs requirements. This meant creating a multi-account design that would allow for centralised control across the organisation and a growing number of workloads to be deployed within their own AWS accounts.

We used AWS Organizations and AWS Control Tower for creating and securing the accounts. We also configured  Security Hub and GuardDuty centrally to ensure that TIG’s security concerns were covered.

Next we integrated AWS IAM Identity Center for Single Sign-On with Microsoft Azure AD so that the Engineering team could access all features with a single login, and AWS Client VPN to provide secure access to internal services. Finally, we used Terraform and Terragrunt to create a scalable Infrastructure-as-code framework and created patterns for deploying resources that could be repeated as often as necessary.

 

The benefits of our solution 

All of this was intended to simplify things as much as possible for the client. We wanted to create a clean and secure working environment for TIG’s engineers, allowing them to begin building their solution immediately without having to make any complex platform decisions. 

We’re pleased to say that we succeeded in this aim. Using the information gained during the discovery phase, we were able to make suggestions and provide options that were tailored to TIG’s working practices. This saved a great deal of time and hassle. Rather than having to learn a new environment from scratch and discover best practices as they went along, TIG’s engineers were able to access the AWS environments for their workloads and begin building from day one. 

This approach was also beneficial to TIG as a whole. Knowing they could rely on us to set things up properly, the company was able to focus on other areas of the business in preparation for the project. This has put them in a much stronger position for the upcoming launch of the platform. 

We completed our task on time and on target, but our work didn’t end there. TIG asked us to stick around for another 12 months to oversee the building of applications and the deployment of new workloads. We’re also working closely with security teams to make sure that everything is up to standard when the platform goes live, and performing AWS Well Architected reviews to ensure that everything is configured according to best practice. 

This ongoing engagement is testament to the level of trust we’ve built with the client. The Instant Group is planning to migrate all of its on-premise workloads to AWS over time, and we’ll be happy to help as long as they need us. 

 

Our AWS services- something for everyone

When it comes to AWS, there's no one size fits all approach. Every business has different needs and expectations, and these should be the starting point of any solution. This belief is at the core of our AWS service.

We never force a ready-made solution on our clients. Instead, we take the time to understand their current and future needs so that we can design a custom solution that is effective and long-lasting. This is a collaborative process, focused as much on enablement as it is on engineering. We don’t just build your perfect AWS solution- we give you the skills to make the most of it. Talk to our team to find out more.