October 2023
Agricultural Modeling and Training Systems Farms New Growth with CloudKeep and AWS IQ
Feeding livestock is a highly technical endeavor. For optimal results, farmers need to offer a precise mix of nutrients to their animals, and collect and assess data on livestock production, health, weight, and much more. Agricultural Modeling and Training Systems (AMTS) has a solution to help farmers in this area. Since 2005, AMTS has used this data to optimize performance and limit environmental impact on farms around the world. As AMTS expanded its AWS footprint, it looked for new ways to efficiently manage its infrastructure and reduce manual tasks. With the help of AWS IQ, AMTS connected with IT consultants at CloudKeep to help build AWS environments using standardized templates.
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A Sprawling Cloud Environment is Difficult to Manage
As animal nutrition science has advanced, farmers have learned that their livestock’s health, productivity, and environmental impact—in essence, their value—depend on a constellation of factors. Through AMTS software, veterinarians, farmers, and animal nutritionists use a wide variety of data, including daily animal activity, animal excretions and emissions, animal temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and precise feed nutrient values. “With these inputs, it’s just amazing how accurate the feeding becomes,” says Caroline Rasmussen, AMTS chief financial officer.
As the solution evolved, AMTS began migrating elements to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and taking advantage of AWS infrastructure. However, the sprawling environment was difficult to manage, and the team had to manually deploy its resources.
Finding Cloud Help through AWS IQ
A search for solutions led AMTS to AWS IQ, which connects companies with AWS Certified experts and AWS Partners. AMTS connected with CloudKeep, a boutique IT consultancy based in New Jersey. “AWS IQ saved us a lot of time in the search for a cloud expert,” Rasmussen says. “I went online and found CloudKeep right away—it was very easy.”
By working with CloudKeep, AMTS was able to streamline its cloud environments and make the most out of cloud technologies. Now, as AMTS moves toward a software-as-a-service (SaaS) architecture, it can follow best practices, ensure security, and deliver a cost-efficient, scalable solution.
“With CloudKeep’s guidance, we created a custom Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) for AMTS, and now we can access servers in a more standardized way,” says Vivian Wu, application developer at AMTS. “CloudKeep has the expertise to point us in the right direction among the large array of AWS solutions, and we are now able to leverage the right technologies to meet our needs.”
Templates for Repeatable Processes on AWS
The CloudKeep team also built a deployment template that can be used across AMTS cloud applications and a wide array of AWS services. “By templatizing our cloud architecture, we have a cleaner way of adjusting when potential issues arise,” says Wu. Instead of manually building new AWS environments for development or staging, AMTS can deploy reusable code and spin up resources with the click of a button.
Using templates, AMTS can now create multiple environments (such as staging, development, and even disaster recovery) that closely mirror the production environment. This allows the company to streamline its software development process.
In addition to accelerating the process, these templates enable AMTS to deploy a range of solutions without having to constantly re-engage CloudKeep. “They have the template now, so they don’t have to hire a full-time engineer to manage their cloud services,” says Shinichi Urano, founder of CloudKeep.
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Shinichi Urano