Financial Aid SaaS Product for Communications, Media and High-Tech

Challenge

CollegeBoard wanted to develop a complete SaaS product to replace their existing desktop-based product and that can be used by many institutions (colleges/universities) to aid in the financial aid process. This is the next generation of the application that replaces the existing one.

• The current product will have to be replaced by a SaaS product leveraging AWS Cloud. It should address all existing capabilities of the product in use today and also cater to new and enhanced capabilities
• This is the first SaaS product being developed by the client
• Ensuring the solution to various complex architectural pieces has been a challenge
• Balancing the product needs from a business perspective with the technological challenges was also a key
• Extensive documentation, approvals and adherence to policies and procedures

Solution

• Hitachi worked with the client leadership, IT and business teams to understand the business requirements, future vision and implemented a collaborative approach to build the product.
• Hitachi laid down the architectural components, formulated the user experience strategy, recommended right fit technology stack for development
• The application is being developed using a serverless architecture leveraging AWS Cloud. Typical services include: S3, DynamoDB, SNS/ SQS, Cognito, IAM, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, API Gateway, Lambda, WAF, Elasticsearch, KMS, etc.​

Outcome

• A robust, sophisticated and user friendly product on AWS Cloud with latest technologies and rich UI that replaces a legacy financial aid application
• Serverless architecture. No need to maintain any servers, just pay for what you use
• Secure, Mobile and accessibility friendly application with more appeal