SaaS · Event-ticketing SaaS platform

TicketSauce hits 99.99% uptime, cuts IT cost 30% migrating Rackspace to AWS

Cloud-to-cloud migrationContainer platform modernizationInfrastructure-as-code foundationFixed-to-consumption cost conversionCross-region & multi-AZ replicationMulti-account segmentationWeb application firewall & bot mitigationCDN & edge delivery architectureManaged billing & resellMigration TCO & business case modellingTarget-state architecture design & costed POCSecrets management & credential elimination

99.99%

uptime — including peak on-sale spikes

~30%

lower total IT cost off Rackspace

4 weeks

migration execution, cutover included

Amazon ECSRDS Multi-AZAWS DMSAuto Scaling

VeUP migrated TicketSauce’s event-ticketing SaaS from Rackspace to AWS in four weeks — Terraform-built VPC, containerized to Amazon ECS, database to Amazon RDS Multi-AZ via AWS DMS, Auto Scaling for peak on-sales. Result: 99.99% uptime at peak, ~30% lower IT cost, ~40% faster provisioning.

The challenge

TicketSauce ran a high-traffic event-ticketing SaaS on Rackspace private cloud and was hitting hard limits: frequent downtime during peak on-sale events (directly impacting revenue), fixed private-cloud pricing paid regardless of utilization, manual provisioning measured in days to weeks, and manual scaling measured in hours — none of which fit an event-driven, spiky demand profile. The platform needed elastic, automated, cost-aligned infrastructure able to absorb on-sale spikes without manual intervention.

The solution

A four-week migration and modernization (8 Apr - 7 May 2024) from Rackspace to AWS (us-east-1). Discovery and dependency assessment fed an AWS environment built from scratch with Terraform IaC (VPC, security groups, multi-AZ); the application was containerized to Amazon ECS (EC2 capacity providers); the database was migrated to Amazon RDS Multi-AZ via AWS DMS; Auto Scaling was wired for peak on-sale traffic. Edge and security via Cloudflare CDN/WAF + AWS WAF + AWS Secrets Manager + SSM; sessions on Amazon ElastiCache (Redis); supporting KMS, CloudWatch, ECR, S3, Route 53, and AWS Global Accelerator — 18 AWS services configured end-to-end, then load-tested, cut over, and monitored. A multi-account structure (management / production / staging) was stood up for the migration.

Production outcomes

KPI	Result
Production outcomes	99.99% uptime including peak on-sale events (versus frequent Rackspace downtime); ~30% decrease in total IT costs (fixed Rackspace pricing to AWS pay-as-you-go); ~40% reduction in provisioning time (manual days/weeks to Terraform minutes); near-instant Auto Scaling capacity (versus manual hours) with automated, repeatable container deployments.
Engagement window	The engagement began commercially in December 2023, with the Well-Architected Review in January 2024. The four-week execution window opened on 8 April: production deployment landed mid-April and cutover completed on 7 May 2024.
Cost / TCO posture	The migration converted a fixed Rackspace cost base into a utilization-aligned AWS pay-as-you-go model — the realized ~30% IT-cost reduction was itself a headline KPI for an event-driven, spiky workload, not just an efficiency note, and client onboarding is no longer infrastructure-constrained.
Lessons & continuation	For an event-driven, spiky workload, converting fixed infrastructure cost to pay-as-you-go is itself a headline KPI, not just an efficiency note; Terraform IaC turns provisioning from days/weeks into minutes and makes the estate reproducible; Auto Scaling on real on-sale demand removes the manual-hours scaling bottleneck that caused peak-event downtime.

AWS services in production

Amazon ECSAmazon RDS (Multi-AZ)AWS DMSAmazon ElastiCacheAWS Global AcceleratorAWS WAFAWS Secrets ManagerAmazon CloudWatch

Delivered with

Terraform