AWS re:Invent 2021 Recap - Fannie Mae Session

One of the AWS re:Invent 2021 sessions that I liked the most was the “Fannie Mae: Migrating at scale without lifting and shifting” session (FS1310). During this session, the Fannie Mae CIO, a Fannie Mae VP of Technology, and an AWS solutions architect reviewed Fannie Mae’s journey to the cloud.

Even though the session took place late on the 4th day of re:Invent, the session was packed with valuable and useful bits of information on how Fannie Mae started and was navigating its road to a digital transformation.

This ongoing digital transformation helped Fannie Mae drive efficiency to deliver more business capability with existing capacity, increase speed to market for their customers and business, and improve stability and resiliency for their platforms and enterprise.

One of the key messages of the session was that cloud adoption is a key enabler to a digital transformation. Fannie Mae’s journey to the cloud is a 3-to-5-year journey for an environment that is constantly changing and developing.

A migration journey to the cloud includes changes and transformations of technology, operating models, change management, and governance. It also includes engaging business stakeholders, promoting awareness of the cloud program, and training associates.

To get their developers up to speed, Fannie Mae baselined cloud skills, conducted self-assessment of cloud skills, and exposed junior developers to experienced developers. Doing so, allowed Fannie Mae to get 49 to 50 % of their applications/workloads operating in the cloud by the end of 2021.

A cloud first strategy allowed Fannie Mae to pivot faster during the Covid-19 pandemic, scale to handle more underwriting volume, and improve regulatory reporting.

Technical Patterns that Fannie Mae utilized to enable migrations included:

• AWS multi-account pattern
• Networking, VPC, and DNS patterns
• Application microservices pattern
• Database refactoring pattern
• Chaos testing and disaster recovery pattern (future state)

Key technical takeaways of the session included:

• Using multi-account AWS environments
• Building modular VPCs
• Building inspection VPCs
• Using hybrid DNS with Route 53 resolvers
• Application refactoring with Amazon ECS/Fargate
• Database refactoring with Aurora PostgreSQL
• Chaos testing with AWS FIS
• Using Amazon Route 53 Application Recovery Controller for DR automation
• Using AWS Resilience Hub to prepare applications from disruptions

AWS re:Invent 2021 included many other sessions that were informative and memorable. The Fannie Mae session caught my interest and attention because it detailed the company’s real-world experiences, challenges, and lessons learned as they continue their journey to the AWS cloud.