Indian educational technology company BYJU’S wanted to maintain its competitive edge and develop and deliver new, engaging learning experiences to over 100 million students around the world. The company had completed an all-in migration of its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2015, but it wanted to improve its operational performance and cloud architecture as it continued to grow.

In October 2020, BYJU’S began using AWS Enterprise Support—a concierge-like service that focuses on helping businesses achieve outcomes and find success in the cloud. AWS recommends that organizations upgrade to AWS Enterprise Support to realize the most value. Since then, BYJU’S has adopted multiple AWS solutions that have optimized its full stack and streamlined the deployment of its applications, which had been downloaded over 100 million times as of 2021. The company has also optimized its cost savings, upskilled its teams, and improved its data security using AWS Enterprise Support.

Founded in India in 2011, BYJU’S offers highly adaptive, personalized learning programs to students. The company’s website was originally hosted through a third party that primarily serves small businesses. At the time, BYJU’S faced challenges scaling to the demand of approximately 90 concurrent users; some of its staff recommended using AWS instead.

In 2015, the company began using AWS for its website, which quickly grew to support 50,000 unique visitors a month. That year, the company migrated its infrastructure to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Using Amazon EC2, BYJU’S achieved scalability to continue its upward growth. Since then, it has been all in on AWS for its cloud needs and has grown to host an average of two million visitors a day.

BYJU’S wanted to stay at the forefront of innovation by increasing the security of its production data, optimizing costs, and automating manual tasks. “Our users are students,” says Aditi Lath, cloud security architect at BYJU’S. “Any small hindrance in the delivery of their education is important. We like that AWS understands that even low-priority issues are vital to us.” BYJU’S decided to turn to AWS Enterprise Support to kick off a company-wide digital transformation and improve its AWS environment.

Proactive Problem-Solving Using AWS Enterprise Support

BYJU’S began its digital transformation by building a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. Within a few months, the company had created staging, development, and production environments in which it could securely test code before deploying it. “Using AWS Enterprise Support helped us understand what approach to take,” says Prashanth BN, assistant vice president of technology at BYJU’S. By setting up a CI/CD pipeline, BYJU’S significantly reduced manual deployments and launched new applications faster than before. With a CI/CD pipeline in place, BYJU’S was able to implement over 100 applications within 1 week in December 2020.

With help from AWS Enterprise Support, BYJU’S has prioritized training and certifying its staff on AWS. In April 2021, the company held its first AWS GameDay, a collaborative learning exercise that tests skills in implementing AWS solutions to solve real-world problems in a gamified, risk-free environment. BYJU’S had a total of 32 participants who learned about security on AWS. Since April, over 30 percent of these AWS GameDay participants have become AWS Certified Cloud Practitioners, a credential that validates cloud fluency and foundational AWS knowledge. The company has also coordinated regular AWS Workshops—hands-on events designed to teach or introduce practical skills, techniques, or concepts that companies can use to solve business problems. “By organizing AWS Workshops, the AWS Enterprise team has been helpful in getting our team upskilled on the latest AWS solutions we’ve been using,” says Aditi.

As a benefit of using AWS Enterprise Support, BYJU’S has a designated Technical Account Manager who works closely with the company to coordinate access to proactive and preventative programs and AWS subject matter experts. More recently, the Technical Account Manager has facilitated the company’s participation in the Security Improvement Program, a proactive service delivered by AWS Support experts that helps users review the health of their cloud operations, optimize costs, and scale workloads efficiently through workload reviews, best practices workshops, and deep dives. BYJU’S also receives trusted advisor reports that organize action items from high to low priority using AWS Enterprise Support. These reports help the company’s leadership problem solve proactively, which has improved the company’s services and workflows. “There could be a pool of things that we need to look into, but we know where we need to direct our attention first,” says Aditi.

One recommendation that BYJU’S has followed has been to automate manual tasks using Amazon Transcribe, which makes it easy for developers to add speech-to-text capabilities to their applications. BYJU’S uses Amazon Transcribe for its meetings and to record its customer service calls. Previously, transcribing a call would take 2–3 hours. Now, the company is able to transcribe a call within a few minutes. Moreover, it can use the transcripts to analyze customer feedback and improve its applications.

As BYJU’S adopted more AWS solutions, it wanted to increase the visibility of its usage and compute costs. To track its expenses, the AWS Enterprise Support team recommended building a CUDOS Dashboard, an in-depth, granular, and recommendation-driven dashboard to help customers dive deep into cost and usage and to fine-tune efficiency. Using the CUDOS Dashboard, BYJU’S has found ways to optimize its cloud architecture. “Working with AWS Enterprise Support has helped us bring our costs down,” says Aditi. “We’re able to track our costs and usage more closely, which is an advantage.”  

Accelerating Acquisitions and Achieving Its Mission on AWS

BYJU’S has worked with AWS Enterprise Support to accelerate its recent acquisitions, and it plans to continue doing so. “We have acquired a few companies, and we are able to easily integrate using AWS,” says Prashanth. “It’s liberating to have our business in one place.”

Similarly important, BYJU’S aims to further develop its analytics on AWS so that it can provide more personalized, meaningful learning experiences to students around the world. “At BYJU’S, we want children to fall in love with learning,” says Aditi. “Using AWS services and AWS Enterprise Support helps us achieve our mission.”

By using AWS Enterprise Support and a dedicated Technical Account Manager, BYJU’S has built an automated CI/CD pipeline, made its security virtually airtight using the Security Improvement Program, and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs. BYJU’S has received support from its Technical Account Manager whenever it wanted a helping hand—including proactive support in the form of recommendations for best practices to build operationally efficient infrastructure.