Plena Alimentos is one of the largest companies in Brazil’s beef protein segment, operating in both national and international markets. As part of the CDM Group, the company provides high-standard meat and derivatives across Brazil and exports to over 50 countries, with notable markets in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Plena Alimentos operated under an IT-managed service provider (MSP on-premises) in a Colocation model. In this setup, the company rented physical space for management, but the servers and appliances were their property. This model presented significant challenges, such as:
- Lack of agility for IT operations.
- Dependency on the provider for environment management and maintenance.
- The need for modernization and greater control over services.
Plena Alimentos sought to move away from this managed model, modernize its infrastructure, increase operational agility, and gain freedom and control over its entire IT environment. To address these challenges, ForceOne partnered with the company to conduct a detailed study of the on-premises infrastructure with the goal of migrating to AWS.
ForceOne, an AWS Advanced partner, specializes in migrating on-premises environments to AWS. With extensive experience and a high level of migration expertise, ForceOne provided Plena Alimentos with a modern, scalable infrastructure aligned with its growth and modernization needs.
Migration Strategy and Execution by ForceOne
ForceOne designed and executed a structured migration to AWS in alignment with Plena Alimentos’ modernization goals. The key stages and solutions included:
Analysis and Planning:
- Comprehensive assessment of the existing on-premises environment.
- Mapping workloads and defining migration waves.
- Leveraging AWS tools, such as Migration Hub, for server assessment and sizing.
Migration Execution:
- Transitioning servers and workloads to Amazon EC2 with a highly available infrastructure.
- Implementing Amazon EBS for storing critical data with optimized performance.
- Configuring Site-to-Site VPN for secure communication between AWS and external environments.
- Utilizing Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) to ensure high availability and performance of web applications accessed by clients.
Modernization and Optimization:
- Deploying AWS S3 as a backup solution for data and applications.
- Leveraging Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and operational visibility, with additional metrics through agents for active monitoring of RAM usage and disk space.
- Implementing Systems Manager for automation and access to EC2 operating systems.
- Migrating internal workloads and systems, including third-party applications, to a cloud-first architecture, offering the IT team greater agility and control.
- Modernizing Protheus, Plena Alimentos’ enterprise ERP, ensuring integration with other products from the same vendor.
Achieved Results:
- Elimination of the Colocation model and independence from managed providers.
- Complete modernization of IT infrastructure with scalable and resilient AWS services.
- Migration of all on-premises servers and workloads to AWS.
- Increased control and agility for the IT team, enabling faster and safer decision-making.
- Improved web application performance and availability with Elastic Load Balancer.
- Secure and efficient communication with external environments through Site-to-Site VPN.
- Significant reduction in operational costs and resource optimization.
Conclusion
Through its AWS migration, facilitated by ForceOne, Plena Alimentos achieved a modern, scalable infrastructure aligned with its growth and efficiency objectives. The migration of Protheus, alongside internal systems and third-party workloads, enabled more agile and resilient operations. The new infrastructure grants the IT team greater freedom and control, supporting national and international expansion with robustness and security. Plena Alimentos is now well-prepared for future challenges, equipped with a solid and scalable technological foundation.
