Client Profile: A leading provider of credit and asset protection products.
Challenges & Pain Points
The company was challenged with outdated infrastructure throughout the organization — equipment at or approaching end of life, suffering from reduced performance relative to the demands of modern applications and inefficient in terms of use of resources such as power, cooling, and footprint. Additionally, the organization was facing the prospect of a large investment in data center infrastructure, as their lease was expiring and a change of venue was nearly certain.
With the previous level of infrastructure, it was becoming increasingly difficult to support new versions of established applications, and difficult — if not impossible — to bring in newer or alternative software. All levels and services, from entry-level employees to C-suite; all services from basic file sharing to complex accounting and project management as well as messaging and mobile infrastructure.
The SeaGlass Technology Solution
SeaGlass Technology’ hybridized private/public solution took the most attractive parts of all considered alternatives — hosted compute/storage for production/24×7 compute resources; public cloud services for messaging, bulk data storage and near-line business continuity services — and combined them, giving the organization a multifaceted IT strategy which provided both the opportunity for a seamless transition during the corporate move, as well as flexibility for future requirements. All of this was gained while offloading IT management and operations to SeaGlass Technology. The organization was able to save the cost of constructing a new data center in the extremely high priced environment of Manhattan, while maintaining direct control over their primary production computing environment. They were able to leverage low-cost public storage infrastructure for backups and pay-as-you-go resources for little-used but absolutely necessary pieces of the overall strategy like disaster recovery infrastructure. Messaging was moved from an in-house and collocated Microsoft Exchange cluster to Office 365, completely offloading messaging infrastructure without adding any costs, due to Microsoft’s licensing policies.
Implementation Of The Solution
A number of challenges were encountered during implementation. Coordination of all facets of the upgrade — moving from an onsite VMware infrastructure to hosted Hyper-V, shifting from a local VDI remote access solution to hosted VDI, shifting from online disaster recovery to near-line, public cloud — presented varying difficulty levels of management. SeaGlass Technology was able to keep the project moving forward and maintain target timelines. Technical problems always occur in a project of this size and scope, but SeaGlass Technology’ engineers were able to quickly solve every issue that occurred, resulting in a smooth implementation.
The organization was able to complete the upgrade/move project on time with zero downtime and minimal impact to users. While executing a corporate move, The organization completely changed their IT infrastructure from a traditional, in-house client/server model to a hybridized private/public cloud model. This resulted in the organization being able to take advantage of the best offerings of each type of modern IT technologies, while avoiding reinvestment in the most expensive pieces of traditional models.
Results Of The Solution
Financially, the organization *didn’t* spend a mid-six figure sum on a new data center. Large capex expenditures were eschewed in favor of much more manageable monthly opex fees for hosting and cloud services. In terms of IT management, SeaGlass Technology is able to provide high-level IT management services, including assistance with audit and cybersecurity needs and requirements, easing the burden on company staff. Company A gained previously unknown flexibility to change its IT strategy as business requires, simply because it no longer needs to justify large up-front expenditures. Opex can be shifted to deal with priorities as priorities change.
Clients Return On Investment
IT is expensive, no matter how it’s implemented. But with careful attention to applying the right solution for a given problem, significant cost savings can be realized. Again, the reduced capex is a big winner. The project is new, so there aren’t yet any ROI statistics; however, overall IT spend for the next 3 years is projected to be about 40% of what the company’s budget would have been to stay with a traditional model.