Background
Harvard Computer Society modernised its legacy web infrastructure by migrating to Amazon S3 static hosting with Amazon CloudFront CDN, delivering a high-performance, cost-efficient, and globally accessible website experience for its academic and student community.
The Challenge
- Outdated hosting services caused inconsistent performance and high maintenance needs.
- Limited scalability impacted reliability during events and academic peaks.
- Global users faced slow load times due to the lack of optimised content delivery.
- High hosting costs strained the society’s limited student-led budget.
Our Solution
- Migrated legacy websites to Amazon S3 with static site generators and automated builds.
- Deployed CloudFront for global acceleration, intelligent caching, and SSL-secured delivery.
- Optimised S3 storage and lifecycle policies to control costs and streamline management.
- Integrated performance monitoring and simplified content updates for non-technical users.
The Result
The new infrastructure significantly improved performance, reduced costs, and empowered the society to focus on education and community engagement.
- 90% faster load times globally through CloudFront acceleration.
- 99.9% uptime ensured reliability during key academic periods.
- 75% cost savings reallocated to educational and student-led initiatives.
- Near-zero maintenance overhead with automated deployments and simplified workflows.
