PowerSchool Modernizes its Legacy System with AWS and LaunchDarkly

Monoliths vs microservices can be a polarizing topic. So it's always refreshing to hear a story about modernization that's decidedly lacking in drama.

PowerSchool—a leading provider of K–12 education technology solutions—migrated a legacy system to AWS. For the process, PowerSchool relied on LaunchDarkly to update its platform and migrate to Amazon DynamoDB. And all of this had to happen while maintaining a consistent experience for the millions of students PowerSchool serves. 

You can read the full case study over on the AWS site, but read on for what you can expect.

What was PowerSchool solving for?

PowerSchool's web-based student information system helps schools and districts manage their educational and administrative services. Within PowerSchool, Naviance is a career and life readiness platform used by over 10 million students. The company wanted to be able to control and release features safely and on time, while ensuring that their modernization efforts didn't disrupt the experience for their millions of users. 

How did they do it?

1. Modernizing a legacy system with feature flags and AWS: PowerSchool chose AWS for its focus on event-driven architectures and serverless computing frameworks, leveraging LaunchDarkly to maximize the value of cloud-native architectures.
   
2. Incremental migration: LaunchDarkly helped PowerSchool migrate incrementally to service-oriented architecture and micro front ends. With feature flags, developers could build and test separate UIs safely and ensure safe rollouts and a cohesive experience for users.

What were the results?

1. -100,000 lines of code: Moving to this new architecture enabled PowerSchool to safely and easily rewrite its software, resulting in a massive reduction in code from its monolithic systems and enabling new domain services that are smaller and easier to maintain.
   
2. Improved productivity and work satisfaction: With the modernized system, PowerSchool developers have been able to move to an improved DevOps working model.
   
3. Innovating for customers with confidence: With the ability to toggle features on and off and test changes on a small group of customers first, PowerSchool is now empowered to customize and deliver feature updates without disruption.

Want to know more about PowerSchool's AWS and LaunchDarkly experience?

You can read the full case study, or check out this talk below from Adam Hisley, Principal Architect at PowerSchool, who shared lessons from Naviance's modernization journey at our Trajectory conference. 

You can also read more success stories from our customers here.