This blog explores how Partners Group AG, a Swiss-headquartered private markets investment firm with over USD 174 billion in assets under management, transformed their business through strategic cloud adoption. Their collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) created a flexible foundation that aligned technology solutions with long-term business vision.

Introduction

In 2020, Partners Group faced a common challenge: they needed to speed up their application delivery process and scale more effectively while managing rising infrastructure costs. The firm initiated a strategic review of their technology landscape and discovered that their legacy infrastructure was hindering their business agility. This set them on a path to explore cloud solutions that could address these pressing needs.Those challenges were:

• Operational constraints: Slow deployment cycles and difficulty scaling during peak periods.
• Cost inefficiencies: Rising maintenance costs and expensive middleware platforms.
• Technical limitations: Inadequate workload segmentation and underdeveloped development practices.

With over 100 business applications supporting their global operations, Partners Group needed a strategic technology provider capable of addressing immediate needs while supporting future growth ambitions and fulfilling regulatory requirements.The firm selected AWS as their strategic cloud provider, aligning with Partners Group’s entrepreneurial culture and investment philosophy. This collaboration delivered access to advanced capabilities in database management, flexible compute options, containerized applications, and secure data streaming technologies.

Technology alone was not the only deciding factor in Partners Group’s choice of AWS. Partners Group appreciated AWS’s commitment to open-source principles and how this approach delivers value to customers across their technology ecosystem.

“What set AWS apart wasn’t just technology — it was their cloud infrastructure approach, embracing openness and enabling freedom of choice across open source and third-party solutions, along with a direct and collaborative model.” — Martin Stúpala, Chapter Leader Solution Engineering, Partners Group AG

A Four-Phase Migration Approach

Partners Group implemented a strategic four-phase AWS migration for their diverse application portfolio. The migration encompassed their technology ecosystem consisting of 70% in-house developed applications, multiple third-party and hybrid systems, and more than 200 virtual servers.Rather than migrating everything at once, the firm prioritized high-value workloads and established a robust cloud foundation that would support all future deployments while meeting the strict regulatory requirements of FINMA and CSSF (FINMA is Switzerland’s and CSSF is Luxembourg’s independent financial-markets regulator).

Figure 1: Partners Group’s four-step cloud migration strategy

The four phases were designed to gradually increase complexity and scale:

1. Foundation Building: Establishing and hardening core infrastructure, security, and governance while migrating select low-risk applications to validate the approach.
2. Scaling the Migration: Implementing industrialized migration processes and accelerating the pace of application migration.
3. Optimization, Innovation & Complexity: Migrating mission-critical applications with complex dependencies while introducing advanced cloud-native architectures.
4. Wrapping Up & Looking Ahead: Addressing remaining technical debt and transitioning from project mode to business-as-usual operations.

This measured approach delivered significant business advantages:

• Reduced Risk – Incremental complexity management protected business operations.
• Operational Excellence – Continuous refinement of migration practices and patterns.
• Team Development – Progressive capability building through hands-on experience.
• Accelerated Delivery – Later phases moved significantly faster using established patterns.
• Cost Optimization – Efficiency patterns identified and standardized over time.
• Business Continuity – Minimal disruption through careful workload prioritization.
• Enhanced Governance – Iterative maturation of security and compliance frameworks.
• Stakeholder Alignment – Early successes-built confidence and support for the program.

Phase 1 – Foundation Building – Creating a Secure Launch Pad

The foundation building phase focused on creating a robust cloud foundation while gaining practical experience without delaying the overall transformation. This initial five-month phase established the essential groundwork for Partners Group’s cloud journey through three strategic workstreams:

1. Establishing the Enterprise Cloud Foundation

Partners Group prioritized security, governance, and operational excellence from day one:

• Multi-Account Structure: Implemented a structured AWS environment with separate accounts for different workloads, ensuring proper isolation and regulatory compliance.
• Security-by-Design: Embedded comprehensive identity management and compliance guardrails into the foundational architecture.
• Enterprise Connectivity: Created secure, high-performance connections between AWS and existing data centers.
• Environment Segregation: Separated development, testing, and production environments at the account level to prevent cross-contamination.
• Automation First: Deployed all infrastructure through code (Terraform) and automated pipelines, improving consistency and auditability.
• Enterprise Monitoring: Established integrated visibility across all cloud resources.

2. Initial Workload Selection

To validate their approach, Partners Group carefully selected an initial set of applications for migration:

• Two internally developed web applications with minimal external dependencies.
• One third-party containerized application with modern, cloud-ready architecture.
• One batch processing application with predictable operational patterns.

This deliberate selection provided the ideal balance of meaningful testing without business-critical risk.

3. Cross-Functional Collaboration

Success required bringing together complementary expertise where:

• Internal Engineers contributed deep business knowledge and application understanding.
• AWS Professional Services provided architectural guidance and security best practices.
• Near-Shore Cloud Engineers delivered implementation capacity and technical expertise.

Phase 1 Achievements

This initial phase delivered several critical business outcomes:

Proven Migration Blueprints

• Validated technical approach and identified capability gaps.
• Established architectural reference models for future migrations.
• Implemented formal architecture review processes.

Operational Confidence

• Gained hands-on cloud operations experience.
• Achieved 99.99% application-level availability through multi-Zonal architecture.
• Enhanced monitoring capabilities.

Financial Benefits

• Implemented cost-efficient batch processing using pay-per-use model with over 50% cost reductions.
• Demonstrated dynamic scaling based on actual usage patterns.
• Established database right-sizing methodologies.

“Our key learning was the importance of velocity and focus. Cloud migrations are most successful when executed swiftly with a minimal set of pre-agreed refactoring recommendations. This ‘migrate first, transform later’ approach proved to be the optimal balance between speed to cloud and technical excellence.” – Martin Stúpala, Chapter Leader Solution Engineering, Partners Group AG

Phase 2: Scaling the Migration – Industrializing the Cloud Journey

After establishing a solid foundation, Partners Group launched Phase 2 with ambitious goals: industrialize the migration process, improve application performance, and build internal cloud expertise across the organization.

Figure 2: Partners Group’s Migration Factory Process

Strategic Approach

Partners Group’s leadership team fully committed to the cloud transformation, implementing several strategic initiatives:

• Pragmatic Migration Strategy: Adopted AWS’s 6R framework (Retire, Retain, Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase) with emphasis on light refactoring where it delivered business value.
• Cloud-First Policy: Designated AWS as the default choice for all new internal applications.
• AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP): Leveraged AWS funding, technical guidance, and proven methodologies to accelerate their journey.
• Organization-Wide Upskilling: Promoted AWS certification across all technology teams as well as selected business teams to create a culture of cloud expertise.

Technical Standards and Governance

A dedicated cloud transformation team established clear standards to guide the migration:

Standardization:

• Container Strategy: Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate for most workloads; ECS on Amazon EC2 for Windows applications; Amazon EKS for complex orchestration
• Modern Architecture: AWS Lambda and serverless for new development; Amazon EC2 for third-party applications lacking container support

Technology Optimization:

• Strategic transition from Windows to Linux where appropriate.
• Database migration from Microsoft SQL Server to PostgreSQL for cost efficiency.
• Replacement of shared folders with object storage for scalability and cost savings.

Figure 3: Partners Group’s Cloud Migration and Modernization Journey

Streamlined Migration Process

Partners Group implemented a migration factory aligned with the AWS Migration Acceleration Program best practices. They began with targeted non-critical workloads, establishing a framework with the following steps:

Figure 4: Streamlined Migration Process

1. Application Discovery & Assessment: Documenting application dependencies, performance requirements, and migration readiness.
2. Initial Architectural Design: Creating cloud-native designs that leveraged appropriate AWS services.
3. Governance & Sign-off (optional with condition): Ensure compliance with architectural and security guidelines. This step may be skipped when the architecture aligns with previously approved workloads and the application has no internet exposure.
4. Development Environment Setup: Deploy the solution through automated pipelines.
5. Final Architecture Sign-off: Comprehensive review by cloud, security, and network experts
6. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) deployment: Validate functionality with business stakeholders.
7. UAT Sign-off & Production Go-Live: Implement with hypercare support for 3-10 business days.
8. Continuous Improvements and Optimization: Pursue ongoing improvements for performance and cost.
9. Decommission the On-Prem infrastructure: Systematically retire on-premises infrastructure.

Upskilling and Team Building

Partners Group implemented a comprehensive talent development strategy to support their AWS migration through:

• AWS Certification Programs: Systematic upskilling of existing team members.
• Involving Application Owners: Keeping business teams engaged throughout migrations.
• Strategic Hiring: Building a specialized internal cloud team to reduce external dependencies.
• Knowledge Sharing: Regular sessions focused on company-specific implementations.

Phase 2 Achievements

Building on the foundation established earlier, Phase 2 delivered remarkable business transformation across multiple dimensions:

• Successfully migrated 42% of applications within the project scope.
• Completed migration of the first two internet-facing applications.
• AWS is now used as a default deployment location for all new workloads.

Operational Excellence

• More predictable application performance through strict workload segregation.
• Enhanced troubleshooting efficiency with simplified architectures.
• Automatic scaling for critical calculation engines during seasonal peaks.

Cost Optimization

• Systematic forced shutdowns of DEV and UAT environments allow to reduce running costs by 25%.
• 80% of migrated applications could switch from Windows to Linux and 30% from Microsoft SQL Server to PostgreSQL which significantly reduces the running costs (up to 60% of savings).

Team Performance & Skills Development

• All internal members of the core project team obtained role-relevant AWS certifications.
• 60% of internal software engineers participated in at least one migration project.
• 60% of internal engineers obtained AWS certifications. When including operational teams, the overall AWS certification coverage reached approximately 40%.

“When resources are limited, the onboarding of new workloads should be prioritized over the migration of legacy, non-actively developed solutions in order to maximize return on investment. Similarly, it is ideal to align with ongoing business-driven projects and prioritize applications expected to undergo important functional uplifts in the near future.” – Martin Stúpala, Chapter Leader Solution Engineering, Partners Group AG

Phase 3: Optimization, Innovation & Complexity – Tackling Mission-Critical Workloads

The third phase marked a significant evolution in Partners Group’s cloud journey as they tackled their largest, most complex, and business-critical applications. This phase tested both their technical capabilities and their organizational readiness to migrate mission-critical workloads with strict recovery requirements.

Transformative Platform Migrations: A Testament to Precision and Collaboration

Partners Group successfully executed two mission-critical platform migrations that represent the backbone of their business operations.The scope was substantial:

• Fund Administration Platform: Managing over USD 174 billion in assets and supporting more than 25 downstream applications.
• Payment Platform: Processing tens of thousands of transactions monthly.

Both migrations required exceptional precision and seamless coordination, mobilizing over 60 engineers and business users across multiple teams in close partnership with several external providers.The company’s commitment to excellence was reflected in their comprehensive testing approach:

• 17,600+ automated test cases.
• Nearly 1,000 manual test scenarios.

Through meticulous preparation including multiple mock go-lives and rollback procedures, Partners Group successfully transitioned both platforms to AWS while maintaining the stringent availability and security standards that are fundamental to Partners Group’s operations.

“The complexity of these migrations pushed our teams to their limits. However, considering the significant costs and dependencies involved, we focused from the beginning on realistic planning and proactive stakeholder management. The simulated mock go-lives and rollbacks were instrumental in securing business support prior to the final deployment and switchover. Thanks to the experience gained during previous project phases and leveraging the flexibility of AWS through Infrastructure as Code (IaC), we were able to deploy and upgrade the payment platform in less than 12 months—compared to the previous on-premises upgrade that took almost twice as long” – Martin Stúpala, Chapter Leader Solution Engineering, Partners

Enhanced Application Resilience

Partners Group significantly improved their application resilience capabilities:

• Operational Impact: Reduced critical application downtime to under 10 minutes.
• Business Continuity: Established formal recovery targets based on business impact analysis.
• Enhanced Visibility: Implemented comprehensive monitoring across all critical systems.
• Risk Management: Categorized applications into criticality tiers based on financial and regulatory impact.
• Proactive Testing: Began controlled chaos engineering experiments using AWS Fault Injection Service.

“We initially underestimated the complexity of monitoring in a hybrid environment. We had separate monitoring for cloud and on-premises, creating visibility gaps. We eventually implemented a unified monitoring strategy with consistent metrics across both environments, significantly improving our incident response capabilities.” – Emanuele Pivato, Head IT Service, Partners Group AG

Embracing Modern Architectures

As confidence in cloud capabilities grew, Partners Group expanded their technical approach:

• Serverless Adoption: Implemented AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway for appropriate workloads.
• Database Modernization: Leveraged Amazon Aurora for enhanced performance and scalability.
• Event-Driven Systems: Built more responsive applications using AWS messaging and event services.

“Serverless was transformative for certain workloads, but we also learned it isn’t a universal solution. Data-intensive applications with predictable loads often performed better with traditional architecture patterns.”– Martin Stúpala, Chapter Leader Solution Engineering, Partners

Financial Governance

Partners Group implemented comprehensive FinOps practices to ensure cloud investments delivered maximum value:

• Cost Monitoring: Deployed advanced analytics tools such as Cloudability alongside AWS Cost Explorer.
• Automated Savings: Implemented scheduled shutdowns of non-production environments, reducing costs by 65%.
• Accountability: Made infrastructure costs visible to application and business teams.

Phase 3 Achievements

This phase delivered significant business impact:

• Migration Momentum: Successfully deployed 69 enterprise workloads to AWS, exceeding the target of 65 applications.
• Business Agility: Reduced deployment cycles to under 5 business days for internal solutions, a dramatic improvement from previous timeframes.
• Innovation Acceleration: Provided engineering teams with on-demand access to advanced AWS services without procurement cycles or specialized staffing requirements.
• Financial Efficiency: Established predictable cloud spending with clear accountability.

Phase 4: Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead

The final phase focused on transitioning from project-based migration to sustainable cloud operations while addressing remaining technical debt. This phase was critical for ensuring the long-term success of Partners Group’s cloud investment.

Technical Completion

• Decommissioned on-premises systems after optimizing cloud resources based on six months of data.
• Unified monitoring and security across all applications with advanced threat detection.

Organizational Evolution

• Transferred ownership to permanent agile teams while maintaining a central platform team.
• Established cross-functional governance with defined cloud career paths.

Forward Looking Initiatives

• Partners Group will enhance infrastructure automation, disaster recovery, and observability capabilities while implementing feedback loops to ensure continuous improvement.

“This journey has transformed our technology organization, not just technologically but culturally. We’ve become more agile, cost-conscious, and innovative. As we move forward, we’re well-positioned to leverage cloud and AI/GenAI technologies for continued growth and success.” – Patrik Bless, Head Business Applications, Partners Group.

Strategic Insights for Cloud Success

Throughout their migration journey, Partners Group identified several critical success factors:

• Strategic Approach & Talent Development: Begin with non-critical applications while investing in people through comprehensive training and hands-on experience. This builds confidence, establishes patterns, and creates a learning environment that attracts and retains talent while developing the skills needed for mission-critical migrations.
• Prepare for Day Two Operations: Post-deployment activities like monitoring and cost management are more critical than the migration itself. Prepare support teams early for these ongoing responsibilities.
• Prioritize Applications Strategically: Direct new workloads straight to AWS and prioritize applications needing major updates. This approach accelerates return on investment and aligns migration with ongoing projects.
• Partner with Aligned Interests: Engaging AWS Professional Services as an implementation partner with fully aligned interests proved invaluable. Their shared commitment to project success eliminated competing agendas and fostered a truly collaborative approach to problem-solving.
• Manage Migration Momentum: Multiple parallel migrations require careful monitoring and continuous team motivation. Shorter and focused initial migrations typically result in lower overall costs.
• Balance Standards with Flexibility: Use migration patterns to speed delivery while allowing necessary deviations to foster innovation.
• Maintain Technical Discipline: Adhering strictly to principles like 100% Infrastructure as Code with automated CI/CD pipelines and least-privilege access control pays significant dividends. This discipline reduces errors, improves security, and enables consistent delivery across environments.
• Integrate Security from the Start: Embed security and compliance requirements early to avoid costly retrofitting later.
• Prioritize Financial Transparency: Implement FinOps practices early to maintain cost discipline throughout the migration.
• Learn from Setbacks: The most valuable insights often come from failures, not successes. Maintain a blameless culture that encourages sharing these learnings.
• Secure Executive Support: Consistent leadership backing helps overcome organizational resistance and maintains project momentum.

Conclusion

Partners Group proved that regulated Swiss financial institutions can simultaneously achieve compliance, innovation, and operational excellence through strategic cloud adoption. Their journey continues as they now leverage cutting-edge technology including serverless and AI services to strengthen competitive differentiation in the financial services industry.

“As a global leader in private market investments, Partners Group recognizes the strategic importance of digital transformation. By implementing cloud-native solutions from AWS, the firm is advancing its technical capabilities to further strengthen competitive differentiation.” – Raymond Schnidrig, CTO, Partners Group.

To get started with AWS financial services in Switzerland, companies can refer to the comprehensive “Guide to Financial Services Regulations and Guidelines in Switzerland“.