Small Enterprise Development Agency

Public Sector, Government

Challenges 

The National Presidential MSME Awards, presented by the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) aim to provide a digital platform that facilitates smooth nominations, voting, and real-time updates, enabling a seamless experience for all users throughout the awards process. However, without an automated CI/CD pipeline, the organization encounters challenges in maintaining reliable deployments, timely updates, and secure monitoring. These challenges can affect scalability and real-time updates, especially during peak periods of engagement, impacting both user experience and operational stability. 

 The goal is to design a scalable, secure AWS CI/CD pipeline to support automated deployments, testing, and monitoring, ensuring stable and resilient platform operations. This solution aims to enhance the MSME Awards platform's reliability, streamline update processes, and provide a robust infrastructure to support continued growth and user interaction, particularly during high-demand voting and nomination phases.  

Solution

To design a solution for the National Presidential MSME Awards platform using AWS CI/CD practices, the objective is to build a scalable, secure, and automated pipeline that enhances platform stability and ensures a seamless user and administrator experience. 

Source Control and Versioning (AWS CodeCommit) 

AWS Amplify integrates with source control service, AWS CodeCommit,  allowing secure storage of source code, configurations, and artifacts. This supports version control, enabling collaborative development while maintaining code integrity and managing updates. 

Continuous Integration (AWS Amplify) 

AWS Amplify offers a managed CI/CD service that automatically builds, tests, and packages the application upon each code commit. This continuous integration process compiles the frontend code, runs unit tests, and prepares the application for deployment, ensuring that every change is validated before reaching users. Amplify’s built-in scalability is ideal for an awards platform with periods of high interaction, ensuring smooth operations. 

Continuous Deployment (AWS Amplify Console) 

The Amplify Console automates the deployment process, supporting multiple environments (e.g., dev, staging, production) and making it easy to push updates with minimal manual intervention. This automation guarantees that every build and deployment is tested, enabling a fast and secure delivery pipeline for new features and improvements. 

Monitoring and Scaling (Amazon CloudWatch + AWS Auto Scaling) 

AWS Amplify includes integrations with Amazon CloudWatch, which provides real-time monitoring, alerts, and logging to maintain platform health and responsiveness. Amplify automatically scales with demand, which is critical for maintaining performance during high-traffic events like voting and nominations. This dynamic scaling ensures the platform remains responsive and reliable during peak loads. 

 This combination of services within AWS Amplify creates a robust, end-to-end CI/CD pipeline that aligns with the needs of the National Presidential MSME Awards platform for security, scalability, and continuous innovation. 

"Umdoko Internet has truly elevated our application process with a platform that is both intuitive and robust. The design is incredibly user-friendly, making it easy for applicants from across the country to apply and pitch for our award. One standout feature has been the integration of Generative AI, which automatically handles the initial screening. This has been a game-changer, saving us considerable time and operational costs. By automating this first stage, we’ve significantly reduced the extensive manual labor previously required, allowing our team to focus on strategic tasks and effective program management. The Gen AI’s fair and accurate evaluations ensure that only the most relevant, high-quality applications move forward, creating a more streamlined and impactful selection process. We couldn’t be happier with the transformation." 

- Ms Kgaladi Sethoga 
Small enterprise development Finance agency