CYNCLAIR: Driving Modernization and Cost Efficiency Through AWS Migration

 

About CYNCLAIR

CYNCLAIR is a leading Thai-owned cybersecurity company serving organizations across Thailand, Myanmar, and Singapore. As a trusted provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, CYNCLAIR helps clients stay ahead of cybercrime through advanced technology, robust security frameworks, and expert support.

The company recently launched AZURITES OpenXDR, Thailand’s first Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform built to global standards. This platform enables customers to achieve advanced threat detection and incident response capabilities at a cost-effective price point.

To accelerate innovation and reduce operational overhead, CYNCLAIR decided to migrate its core applications and infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The goal: minimize on-premises data center costs, reduce software licensing fees, and optimize platform performance.

Challenges

Prior to the migration, CYNCLAIR’s legacy on-premises environment faced several critical issues:

  • High Capital Costs: Maintaining physical infrastructure and renewing VMware Enterprise License Agreements (ELA) required significant investment.
  • Limited Flexibility: The existing infrastructure lacked the agility and scalability needed to support growing business demands.
  • Security Gaps: There was no centralized security or compliance monitoring, increasing operational risk and regulatory exposure.
  • Operational Risk: Hardware and network failures posed a threat to service continuity and customer trust.

Migration and Modernization Approach

To overcome these challenges, CYNCLAIR partnered with Metro Systems Corporation (MSC), an AWS Advanced Partner, to design and implement a comprehensive migration and modernization strategy.

The project followed a structured approach:

  1. Assessment & Strategy
    MSC conducted a full assessment of CYNCLAIR’s environment to identify workloads, dependencies, and cost drivers. Based on the findings, a tailored migration strategy was developed to re-host, re-platform, and re-factor workloads.
  2. Landing Zone Foundation
    A secure, scalable cloud foundation was established using AWS Control Tower to enable multi-account governance, security guardrails, and centralized management.
  3. Application Modernization
    Critical applications were containerized and deployed on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to support auto-scaling, multi-AZ (Availability Zone) resilience, and simplified operations.
  4. Database Modernization
    Enterprise databases were migrated from on-premises infrastructure to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL using AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS). The legacy ELK stack was replaced with Amazon OpenSearch Service to reduce licensing costs and enhance performance.
  5. Security Enhancement
    Security posture was strengthened with Amazon GuardDuty for continuous threat detection, AWS Config for compliance monitoring, and centralized logging for better operational visibility.

Benefits and Business Outcomes

By migrating to the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region, CYNCLAIR achieved measurable business outcomes:

  • Cost Efficiency
    Eliminated the need for expensive VMware ELA renewals and reduced data center operational costs.
  • Improved Scalability
    Containerized workloads on Amazon EKS enable automatic scaling to meet fluctuating demand.
  • Enhanced Security Posture
    Centralized threat detection and compliance monitoring improved regulatory readiness and reduced security risks.
  • Operational Resilience
    A modern multi-AZ architecture improved availability, reduced downtime, and simplified maintenance.
  • Faster Innovation
    Freed from managing infrastructure, CYNCLAIR can now focus on evolving its XDR platform and delivering customer value.

Tech Stack

  • Amazon EC2: Compute for core workloads and scalable application hosting
  • Amazon EKS: Managed Kubernetes service for container orchestration and auto-scaling microservices
  • Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL: Managed relational database service with automated backups and Multi-AZ support
  • Amazon OpenSearch Service: Fully managed search and log analytics to replace ELK stack
  • Amazon GuardDuty: Continuous threat detection and intelligent security monitoring
  • AWS Config: Real-time compliance assessment and configuration tracking across accounts
  • AWS Backup: Centralized backup orchestration for workloads and databases
  • AWS Control Tower: Multi-account governance, guardrails, and identity management
  • Amazon CloudWatch: Centralized metrics, logs, and operational dashboards
  • AWS CloudTrail: Governance, audit logging, and API activity tracking
  • Amazon VPC: Secure, isolated networking environment with granular traffic control
  • Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): Load balancing for resilient and highly available applications
  • Amazon CloudFront: Global CDN for high-performance content delivery
  • Amazon S3: Scalable object storage for logs, backups, and application data