The Nationwide Group – AWS Cost Optimization and Legacy Modernization

Client Snapshot

Industry: Real Estate & Property Appraisal

Company Size: Enterprise

Region: Canada

Website: https://www.nationwideappraisals.com

Overview: The Nationwide Group is Canada’s largest appraisal company, serving financial institutions with real estate valuations and property technology services.

The Challenge

  • Struggled for years to successfully migrate from on-premises infrastructure to AWS.

  • Prolonged outages in their data center exposed risks in resilience and continuity.

  • AWS bills kept climbing without clarity into what was driving the spend.

  • Lacked visibility and governance over existing AWS usage.

  • Legacy Java application was difficult to modernize and deploy in the cloud.

Why They Chose Us

  • Expertise in cloud cost governance, tagging strategies, and sustainability principles.
  • Proven track record in modernizing legacy workloads for the cloud.
  • Ability to deliver quick wins while building long-term AWS migration and modernization foundations.
  • Strong focus on making cloud usage visible, accountable, and aligned to business goals.

Our Solution

Over a fast-moving engagement, we provided The Nationwide Group with a clear path forward in AWS:

Tagging & Cost Visibility:

  • Implemented a structured tagging strategy across all AWS resources.

  • Enabled cost breakdowns by environment, team, and workload across multiple accounts.

Cost Optimization:

  • Investigated usage patterns and eliminated idle or over-provisioned resources.

  • Rightsized compute instances to align capacity with actual demand.

  • Achieved immediate monthly savings of nearly 50%.

Legacy App Modernization:

  • Containerized their legacy Java application using Docker.

  • Migrated the app into a resilient, auto-scaled AWS environment, ready for future enhancements.

Governance & Future Sustainability:

  • Established frameworks for ongoing cost governance and modernization planning.

  • Ensured workloads were aligned with AWS best practices for resilience and sustainability.

Outcomes & KPIs

  • 49% reduction in monthly AWS spend (from $37,000 to $19,000).
  • Full cost visibility unlocked through structured tagging.
  • Successful migration and containerization of legacy workloads.
  • Improved resilience, scalability, and modernization potential.
  • Empowered client to continue cloud transformation confidently.

Client Quote

“Borealis Solutions brought clarity and control to our AWS usage. Not only did they cut our bill by almost half, but they set us up with a strategy to sustainably modernize our infrastructure. Their expertise and speed made the difference.”
  • Executive Leadership, The Nationwide Group

Future Roadmap

  • Ongoing optimization of containerized environments.
  • Migration of additional legacy services to cloud-native architectures.
  • Implementation of cost monitoring dashboards and AI-driven automation for governance.