Onyx Advisory — Modernization Audit
A mid-market financial services firm managing significant assets under management engaged us after recognizing that their technology infrastructure had not kept pace with their growth. Manual processes, siloed data systems, and legacy on-premise infrastructure were creating operational risk and limiting scalability. We were brought in to assess the full technology stack and deliver a clear modernization roadmap with phased execution.
Infrastructure Readiness Assessment
Significant modernization required — phased 18-month roadmap recommended
Domain Gap Analysis
Infrastructure
CriticalSecurity
HighData Management
CriticalAutomation
CriticalObservability
HighCompliance
LowPhased Modernization Roadmap
Cloud Infrastructure Migration
- →Audit existing on-premise systems and define cloud architecture blueprint
- →Migrate primary data stores to AWS RDS with automated backup policies
- →Implement IAM roles, VPC segmentation, and network security groups
- →Establish observability baseline with CloudWatch + custom dashboards
AI & Workflow Automation Layer
- →Deploy CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions → AWS CodeDeploy)
- →Implement AI-powered workflow automation for operations and reporting
- →Integrate unified data API layer across all business systems
Enterprise Hardening & Optimization
- →Zero-trust security model implementation and penetration testing
- →Performance optimization, cost modeling, and capacity planning
Engagement Summary
The Challenge
Financial services firms face unique modernization constraints: regulatory compliance requirements, data security obligations, and operational continuity needs mean that straightforward cloud migrations are rarely viable. Every change must be carefully sequenced to avoid disruption to client-facing operations while legacy systems remain in production — a challenge that demands architectural thinking, not just technical execution.
The Solution
We conducted a seven-domain technology assessment covering infrastructure, security posture, data management, automation, observability, developer experience, and compliance. Each domain was scored against industry benchmarks and evaluated for modernization readiness. The resulting roadmap was structured in three phases — allowing the organization to modernize progressively, keeping critical systems operational throughout — with clear ROI projections tied to each milestone.
Results & Outcomes
What We Delivered
- →Seven-domain infrastructure and technology assessment
- →System-by-system gap analysis with risk classification
- →Phased 18-month modernization roadmap
- →Cloud architecture blueprint for AWS migration
- →Security hardening plan with zero-trust framework
- →CI/CD implementation guide and toolchain recommendation
- →AI automation opportunity analysis
- →ROI projection model across all three phases
Our Approach
Technology audits fail when they produce reports that gather dust. Our approach is to build the assessment and the roadmap simultaneously — so that by the time we deliver findings, the path forward is already sequenced, budgeted, and ready for board approval. For this engagement, we structured three phases that allowed the organization to modernize progressively, keeping revenue-critical systems operational throughout while each phase funded the next.
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