Re-architecting identity products as cloud SaaS

Context

The company provides identity verification and data products to other businesses. It was moving toward a cloud SaaS model, and it had grown partly through acquisitions whose products needed to fit a common architecture.

Challenge

• A core identity platform was built as a monolithic .NET system that was difficult to scale and change.
• Offering products as SaaS required multi-tenancy, isolation and cloud-native operation.
• Acquired products used different technologies and needed a route into the strategic architecture.

What was done

Bexley’s founder was technical architect:

• Co-designed and implemented the company’s first multi-tenant, cloud-native SaaS architecture on AWS.
• Led the transformation of a core identity platform from a monolithic .NET system to a scalable microservices platform.
• Delivered cloud-based authentication orchestration and real-time workflow services.
• Guided the integration of newly acquired products into the strategic architecture.

Architecture and approach

The platform was decomposed into services with clear responsibilities and contracts, so each could be deployed and scaled independently. Multi-tenancy was designed in from the start rather than added later. Integration patterns, including an enterprise service bus where suitable, gave acquired products a defined way to connect.

How this applies to your organisation

If a successful product is constrained by its original architecture, or you are bringing systems together after growth or acquisition, a target architecture with staged decomposition lets you change it without stopping delivery. See Architecture and Development.