FFB LMCS DevOps and Architectural Solutions with AWS

The Challenge

The Federal Financing Bank (FFB) is a government corporation created by the Federal Financing Bank Act of 1973. The mission of the FFB is to reduce the costs of Federal and federally-assisted borrowings, to coordinate such borrowings with the Government’s overall fiscal policy, and to ensure that such borrowings are done in ways that least disrupt private markets. To accomplish this mission, the FFB exercises its broad statutory authority to purchase obligations issued, sold, or guaranteed by Federal agencies. FFB uses the Loan Management Control System (LMCS) to manage the loan life cycle. The LMCS is a complex financial system that stores promissory note details, which define the terms of loan commitments; generates repayment schedules; manages General Ledger (GL) balances and ensures repayment of loans. LMCS was originally developed in the 80s and consisted of legacy code that limited functionality and modernization efforts.

Solution with AWS

LinTech Global Inc. (LinTech) provides operations and maintenance of the Loan Management Control System (LMCS) and FEMA Loan Control System (FLCS), which entails daily system monitoring, Agile software development and maintenance, and robust customer support to address changes in LMCS as the system is being modernized over the course of the contract.  We provide project management operations, Agile software development and maintenance, Help Desk, and customer support services for the FFB and users of the LMCS and FLCS. We create and maintain SharePoint libraries and associated workflows in SharePoint to manage and track change requests, artifacts from the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) from various projects, deliverables, and other LMCS/ FLCS maintenance and development tasks. LinTech leverages JIRA and Confluence in the new AWS WC2H environment to document security and infrastructure related change requests and document critical process updates. LinTech is currently evolving the change request process for the JIRA environment.

Our team provided key services in support of the FFB migration to Amazon cloud (AWS).  LinTech’s skill and expertise were critical to the successful AWS architecture configuration and set up of VTCs, and software in support of the application migrations for LMCS and FLCS to AWS. Our team provided input into plans of 3rd party infrastructure contractor planning. Our team developed the application specific migration planning, regression test planning, migration cutover plans, and related tasks.  LinTech team ensured that VPCs and terminal servers were set up appropriately and facilitated problem resolutions in the AWS cloud via coordinated meetings with FFB and JIRA tickets with follow up.

The LinTech PM provided the MS Project planning for the successful migration of the LMCS / FLCS applications to the WC2H environment in AWS. The planning support also included MS Project plans for detailed regression testing for LMCS and FLCS. Additionally, the PM and our System Administrator and System Engineer provided key guidance to the AWS project plan from the WC2H provider. The PM also provided Kanban diagrams and JIRA charts to illustrate progress across all stakeholders as the effort moved through implementation and cutover.

LinTech’s System Administrator has also been critical in establishing and providing AWS architecture expertise including guidance to the AWS provider regarding Virtual Private Cloud (VPCs), Oracle RDS, patching, scanning, S3 buckets, etc. The LinTech Team also established the LMCS configuration and key components including Tomcats, data transfers from the old environment and data loads, backups in the new environment, Yield Curve and Yield Curve architecture updates.

LinTech’s Sr. Developer/Engineer developed the strategy to convert the LMCS / FLCS to a single code base to improve maintainability and function of LMCS and FLCS. Our Sr. Developer/Engineer also developed the configuration for both systems across 8 environments. Sr. Developer/Engineer and System Administrator were critical to ensuring that the system was successfully built and ready for cutover, and execution of successfully cutover.

Benefits of Using AWS

• FFB has realized increased application processing speeds

• Increased flexibility and scalability as is modernized to meet FFB’s evolving needs

• Reduced annual infrastructure costs for FFB

About LinTech Global, Inc.

LinTech Global, Inc. provides Enterprise IT Infrastructure Support, Agile and DevOps, Financial Management, Cybersecurity and Virtualization, Cloud Services, and Health IT support to federal agencies.

Founded in 2007, LinTech is a small business that is ISO 9001, ISO 27001 certified and CMMI DEV and SVC Level 3 appraised. Our clients include the Army, Navy, USAF, DHA, FAA, DSCA, DCMA, DCAA, DoD OIG, VA, CSOSA, and EPA. Our contract vehicles include GSA STARS 2, Schedule 70, MOBIS, FAA eFAST, Seaport-e

On several of our contracts, LinTech leverages AWS for our development and testing functions, for analysis, and to host environments used by our federal clients and stakeholders throughout the United States. Using AWS enables us to spin up new environments quickly, confidently, and securely at a low cost to the Government.