Credit Acceptance Corporation (CAC) has modernized its infrastructure by adopting public cloud services, starting with AWS, to meet increasing requests for native cloud capabilities from the business and vendors. This initiative was crucial for supporting critical applications and offloading legacy systems.

To achieve this, CAC engaged AHEAD to design and implement an AWS cloud infrastructure that adheres to best practices and provides the necessary flexibility and scalability for current and future workloads.  AHEAD analyzed CAC’s requirements, providing recommendations for optimizing the AWS environment. This involved reviewing CAC’s existing AWS environments, educating stakeholders on AWS architecture, and gathering requirements for necessary revisions.

AHEAD identified CAC’s loan origination application, which experiences peak demand during tax return season, as a critical area needing scalability beyond the limitations of the existing data center infrastructure. AHEAD designed an AWS cloud foundation incorporating operational best practices, a new container-based architecture, and a comprehensive security assessment. This design ensures CAC can leverage AWS services for scalability while protecting sensitive data.

The AWS Foundations Design equips CAC with a robust, scalable environment to support its current and future workloads. As CAC’s requirements evolve, the AWS infrastructure will adapt while maintaining consistent core processes. Continuous evaluation against AWS’s Well-Architected Framework is recommended to ensure alignment with best practices in operations, security, reliability, performance, and cost optimization.

This project has set the foundation for CAC’s cloud-first strategy, enabling them to run their cloud infrastructure at scale. With this cloud-first approach, CAC is now well-positioned to meet the demands of their business and customers, ensuring efficient, scalable, and secure operations across their cloud environment.