How a global FinTech operating in 100+ countries overcame pandemic-era laptop shortages and legacy VDI limitations by deploying AWS WorkSpaces across 5 regions — provisioned in minutes, integrated with enterprise systems, and scaled through five phased regional rollouts.
A global payments FinTech with operations across 100+ countries and thousands of employees and contractors needed an enterprise-grade cloud desktop solution deployable in days — not months — to address pandemic-era laptop supply chain failures, legacy VDI capacity limits, and the challenge of rapidly onboarding development teams across five continents. MacondoTek assessed the client's requirements, designed a multi-region AWS WorkSpaces architecture, and executed five phased regional rollouts — delivering a platform integrated with the client's existing Active Directory, Okta SSO/MFA, BigFix, and ServiceNow systems, with Infrastructure as Code throughout and full PCI/InfoSec compliance.
The client is a global FinTech company providing payments solutions to enterprises and mid-sized companies, with operations in over 100 countries and a workforce of thousands of employees and contractors worldwide. As a high-compliance financial services provider, the client must meet stringent security and PCI standards for all systems used by development and operational teams.
MacondoTek is a cloud consulting and professional services firm headquartered in Atlanta, USA, with nearshore delivery teams across Latin America, specializing in cloud architecture, data platforms, and application modernization on AWS. As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner with Service Delivery Program designations for Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB, MacondoTek supports organizations across the full cloud lifecycle, from migration through cloud-native development to 24/7 managed operations. Its proprietary MTK CloudOpps platform powers FinOps and cost governance engagements with enterprise-wide visibility across large multi-account AWS environments, including deep experience serving financial services organizations that must balance reliability, security, and compliance with cost optimization.
The client’s global workforce expansion, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, created a perfect storm of infrastructure challenges. Existing VPN and legacy VDI systems were at capacity as workers moved to remote settings, and company acquisitions required rapid onboarding of new users who faced weeks-long delays waiting for physical laptops — victims of the global hardware supply chain shortage. New mergers meant entire organizations needed to be brought onto the client’s corporate network and security standards within days, not the months a traditional workstation rollout would require.
For development teams specifically, the challenges were acute: developers in remote locations experienced slow network performance that hampered productivity, project-specific tooling and IDEs required lengthy environment setups, and rebuilding a development environment could cost days of productive work. Meanwhile, IT Operations teams faced the compounding challenges of deploying hardware globally, managing security across a distributed estate, protecting developer workstations against supply chain attacks, and ensuring every device met PCI-DSS and InfoSec compliance standards.
The client needed a solution that could be deployed in days not months, eliminate the physical device dependency, scale globally, integrate deeply with existing enterprise systems, and meet the security and compliance bar of a regulated financial services company.
MacondoTek conducted a thorough assessment of the client’s requirements, integration landscape, and operational processes — then designed and delivered a multi-region AWS WorkSpaces architecture that became the backbone of the client’s remote developer access program. The solution was built entirely using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) with GitLab CI/CD pipelines to ensure every environment was reproducible, auditable, and consistently configured across regions.
The architecture deployed 5 Virtual Private Clouds across 5 AWS regions (Canada, EU ×2, Australia, US, India), each with high availability across multiple Availability Zones and connectivity to the client’s 3 global datacenters in North America and Europe. Inter-region traffic routes over the AWS backbone via Transit Gateway rather than the public internet — solving a critical latency problem discovered early when EU users needed to access systems in the Canada region via MPLS.
Custom WorkSpace images encode the client’s corporate security standards, monitoring tools, and pre-configured developer IDEs — so a new workspace is provisioned fully ready in approximately 20 minutes. Enterprise integrations include MS Active Directory (with AD Connector per environment), Okta for SSO and MFA, BigFix for automated software distribution and patching, and ServiceNow for the provisioning and support workflows. The WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer was deployed to control billing via Auto Stop policies for idle workspaces, with custom management scripts generating daily usage and cost reports.
Rather than a big-bang deployment, MacondoTek led a phased rollout that allowed lessons from each region to be incorporated into the next — growing from a small pilot to a global platform across 5 continents.
Small pilot group in the Canada region. Established the first custom WorkSpace image with corporate applications and security tools. Validated deployment scripts and CI/CD pipelines. Workspaces ran PCOIP protocol, connected to the Canada Active Directory Domain Controller.
Canada adoption exceeded projections, requiring a CIDR re-evaluation. Deployed EU region connecting to the EU datacenter. Integrated Okta MFA across all environments. Discovered that half of EU users needed access to Canada-hosted systems — MPLS couldn't deliver the required speeds, so MacondoTek deployed a second EU environment connected to the Canada Direct Connect via Transit Gateway, routing over the AWS backbone.
A company acquisition required rapid enrollment of users across Canada, EU, and Australia. Australia users experienced unacceptable latency when assigned to existing environments, so a dedicated environment was deployed in ap-southeast-1 using the AWS backbone for datacenter connectivity. Key learning: antivirus conflicts with WorkSpace image creation required process adjustments.
Deployed US environment and a second EU environment for the UK domain. Streamlined user intake workflows to reduce onboarding time. Integrated BigFix for automated software deployment and patching. Deployed the WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer, retired bundled Office licenses, and built custom management scripts for daily usage and cost reporting.
A large user intake driven by decommissioning the legacy VPN and migrating users off legacy VDI. India-based contractors experienced latency and disconnection issues, so a dedicated India environment was deployed and routed via Transit Gateway to US and EU datacenters. Resolved local OS firewall conflicts. Migrated all environments from PCOIP to WSP protocol, resolving video/audio issues and screen blurriness.
The platform enabled the client to onboard hundreds of users across 5 continents while decommissioning legacy VPN and VDI infrastructure — delivering measurable improvements across developer productivity, IT operations, security, and business continuity.
Designed and deployed 5 independent WorkSpaces environments across 5 AWS regions, each connected to the client's global datacenters — with Transit Gateway routing over the AWS backbone to solve the inter-region latency problem that MPLS could not address.
Deep experience integrating AWS WorkSpaces into complex enterprise environments: Active Directory with AD Connector, Okta SSO/MFA, BigFix software distribution, ServiceNow provisioning workflows, and GitLab CI/CD — all from the first deployment.
Rather than a high-risk big-bang rollout, MacondoTek led 5 phased regional deployments — each building on the previous. Lessons from CIDR sizing, imaging conflicts, protocol selection (PCOIP → WSP), and firewall configurations were incorporated forward rather than repeated.
Deployed WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer, retired expensive bundled Office licenses, implemented Auto Stop policies, and built custom daily usage and cost reporting — ensuring the client had full financial visibility and control as the program scaled to hundreds of users.
