Faced with end-of-support systems and rising operational risk, a national statutory board partnered with Temus to modernise and migrate its SharePoint environment to AWS GCC. The result: a secure, compliant and highly available platform powering community engagement across Singapore.
A Singapore statutory board serves a critical community engagement and grassroots outreach mission across the nation. The organisation operates extensive digital collaboration platforms to support internal operations, facilitate community programs, and enable effective communication across Singapore’s diverse communities.
The statutory board operated a legacy SharePoint 2016 environment hosted on Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machines that were rapidly approaching end-of-support. This aging infrastructure supported five mission-critical applications serving its workforce: an Intranet portal for internal communications and collaboration, an enterprise search system for document discovery, three supporting applications for permissions control, funding administration, and identity management.
The legacy infrastructure presented multiple critical challenges that impacted business continuity and operational efficiency. Performance bottlenecks impacted user productivity and collaboration across the organisation. Manual maintenance processes consumed significant IT resources, diverting attention from strategic initiatives. The inadequate disaster recovery capabilities created substantial business continuity risk, with no clear path to rapid recovery in case of system failure.
As part of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, the agency needed to migrate to the Government Commercial Cloud (GCC) to modernise its infrastructure. The migration had to meet stringent Singapore Government IM8 security compliance requirements while executing a complex upgrade from SharePoint 2016 to SharePoint 2019, all while maintaining zero data loss and minimal disruption to its users’ daily operations.
Temus designed and executed a comprehensive 12-month migration project to AWS Government on Commercial Cloud (GCC 2.0), modernising the SharePoint infrastructure while ensuring business continuity throughout the transition. The solution followed AWS Well-Architected Framework principles and Singapore government compliance requirements, leveraging cloud-native services to deliver enhanced reliability, security, and operational efficiency.
Temus conducted a comprehensive Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) across all six AWS Cloud Adoption Framework perspectives to evaluate organisational readiness and identify potential risks. The AWS Application Discovery Service mapped infrastructure dependencies and workload characteristics, while the Migration Portfolio Assessment (MPA) prioritised applications and identified the optimal migration approach. A Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis compared on-premise and AWS costs, providing financial justification for the cloud transition. The project followed Agile-Scrum methodology with iterative sprints and continuous stakeholder engagement to ensure alignment with business objectives.
The solution implemented AWS Control Tower to establish a secure, multi-account environment with automated security guardrails and centralised governance. The multi-account AWS structure provided clear separation of duties and blast radius containment, following AWS security best practices.
Temus architected a modern, highly available infrastructure using Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server with Multi-AZ deployment for database services, ensuring automatic failover and data redundancy. Amazon EC2 instances hosted SharePoint 2019 web and application servers with Auto Scaling capabilities to handle variable workloads. Amazon S3 provided encrypted backup storage and archival with versioning enabled for data protection. Amazon VPC established network isolation with private subnets for sensitive workloads. Application Load Balancers distributed traffic across availability zones for high availability and fault tolerance.
The migration followed a replatform strategy using the AWS 7Rs framework, upgrading from SharePoint 2016 to SharePoint 2019 while moving to AWS. A phased cutover approach moved through Development, UAT, and Production environments, validating functionality at each stage before proceeding. Comprehensive testing including functional, integration, performance, and user acceptance testing ensured all five applications operated correctly in the new environment. Zero data loss was maintained throughout the migration through careful planning, automated validation, and extensive reconciliation procedures. Automated deployment pipelines with integrated testing enabled reliable, repeatable releases.
Temus delivered comprehensive operational documentation including detailed runbooks and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the operations team. Amazon CloudWatch provided real-time monitoring and alerting with custom dashboards for system health visibility. AWS API Gateway enabled secure connectivity with external systems while maintaining security controls. Automated backup and recovery procedures with documented disaster recovery processes ensured business continuity capabilities. The solution included knowledge transfer sessions and training to ensure the customer’s team could effectively manage the modernised infrastructure.
The solution achieved full IM8 compliance through comprehensive security controls. Private subnets with no direct internet access protected sensitive data and applications. Security Groups and Network ACLs enforced granular access controls at multiple layers. Encryption at rest and in transit protected data throughout its lifecycle. AWS Transfer Family provided secure SFTP capabilities for external file transfers. Third-party Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT), Source Code Review, and Security Self-Assessment Tool (SSAT) validation confirmed the security posture met government standards.
The AWS GCC migration successfully modernised the statutory board’s SharePoint infrastructure, delivering a resilient, secure, and scalable platform that supports the organisation’s community engagement mission. The project achieved all objectives while maintaining business continuity throughout the transition.
The migration delivered a successful upgrade from SharePoint 2016 to SharePoint 2019 with zero data loss, seamlessly transitioning five critical applications serving its few thousand-strong workforce. The phased cutover approach minimised business disruption, allowing users to continue their work without significant interruption. The legacy infrastructure was completely replaced with modern AWS-managed services, eliminating the risks associated with end-of-support software.
The modern AWS infrastructure provides significant operational improvements over the legacy environment. The Multi-AZ deployment delivers high availability and fault tolerance, with automated failover capabilities ensuring continuous service delivery. Infrastructure as Code enables consistent, repeatable deployments across all environments, reducing configuration errors and accelerating release cycles. Automated deployment pipelines have reduced manual errors and accelerated software releases, allowing the organization to respond more quickly to changing business requirements.
The solution achieved full IM8 compliance, meeting all Singapore government security standards and successfully passing third-party VAPT and security assessments. The enhanced security posture leverages AWS-native security services and controls, providing defense-in-depth protection for sensitive government data. Comprehensive audit trails and compliance documentation ensure ongoing regulatory adherence and support future audits.
Disaster recovery capabilities have been substantially improved, with enhanced Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) targets now achievable through AWS services. Automated backup procedures and well-documented recovery processes ensure the organization can maintain business continuity in the face of potential disruptions. Amazon CloudWatch dashboards provide the operations team with real-time visibility into system health, enabling proactive issue identification and resolution before users are impacted.
The project was delivered using Agile-Scrum methodology, with comprehensive knowledge transfer and documentation ensuring the customer’s operations team could effectively manage the new infrastructure. The multi-environment deployment across Development, UAT, and Production with consistent configuration demonstrates best practices in AWS cloud architecture.
The successful migration positions the statutory board for future innovation and scalability while maintaining full compliance with Singapore Government requirements, supporting the organisation’s critical role in community engagement and grassroots outreach across Singapore.
To enjoy the full experience, please upgrade your browser
Try this browser