CLOUD TO ON PREMISE MIGRATION
A COST VERSUS BENEFIT CASE STUDY
Saved our client $2.8 million over a 5 year period
How we helped our client
Our client's CFO brought us in & asked whether spending $580,000 per year on Cloud servers, for 50 employees within one office, was reasonable. And the answer was no. It was not reasonable.
Their monthly Cloud hosting fee was over $48k/month. We brought that expense down to $0.00 with an on-premise solution. The hardware & software investment was $103,000 & had a useful life of 5+ years.
Over a 5 year period, they never experienced downtime because we built in redundant systems to avoid a single point of failure.
Their staff
Their internal IT team migrated their 51 servers to 4 different Cloud providers. And this move was undocumented. Their 6 internal IT staff members & a consultant were supporting only 50 employees. Their staff was laid off. We took over all of their responsibilities including managing & maintaining their network, custom software, programming...
After much due diligence & documentation, we migrated 50 of their 51 virtual servers from 4 Cloud providers to an on-premise solution. The client purchased hardware & software, including 2 servers, 1 primary & the 2nd acted as a replication target. Their international Ecommerce website was kept in the Cloud but we managed to reduce the cost from $6,000/month to $650/month.
The on premise hardware & software investment totaled $103,000. For the 5 year life of the servers, they never experienced any downtime.
What We Accomplished
-
Documented their past & current network infrastructure including their 51 virtual servers in different Cloud facilities;
-
Identified their custom & off-the-shelf software applications, file servers...;
-
Created a detailed project plan including the hardware & software required for an on-premise solution;
-
Created a migration plan to migrate 49 of their 51 virtual servers to the on-premise solution;
-
Audited their Rackspace environment hosting their international websites & eventually found a more cost-effective hosting solution;
-
Migrated their websites from Rackspace to AWS - gained redundancy;
-
For a disaster recovery/business continuity solution, we are replicating their servers to a Cloud-based solution for $4,000/year;
-
Their servers are being monitored 24/7 with a cloud-based system for $60/month
-
The 49 virtual machines are being monitored with a Linux based system that cost $1,000 - a one time fee - to configure the solution.
The Results
-
We saved our client $2.8 million over 5 years with a $103,000 hardware & software investment the first year;
-
We simplified & documented their network;
-
Their users are much happier with a faster network & less problems;
-
Our client has total control over their data & environment;
-
Their network is current & well-documented;
-
Their data is replicated, backed up onsite & in the Cloud.
-
They have a disaster recovery/business continuity solution in AWS.
OUR CLIENTS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH THE RESULTS OF OUR ENGAGEMENT.