Don’t Overcomplicate Your Cloud
When I first joined WQIS over three years ago, my first order of businesses was to clean up an overly complex, expensive, and aging IT infrastructure. Having worked as a technology executive in the insurance industry for many years, I knew that availability, simplicity, agility, security, and risk mitigation were the fundamental requirements of the business. As a CTO with a relatively small IT staff, I needed to provide a high-level of service to my customers (both internal and external) without asking for additional FTEs or increased CapEx.
Our primary data center was housed in our downtown Manhattan office and lacked the features of an enterprise data center (generators, cooling, redundant connectivity etc.). Also, as a marine insurance company, it doesn’t take long to realize that the risks associated with maintaining a downtown Manhattan data center are too great for a mission critical environment.
I inherited three different storage platforms, two backup software solutions, network switches from two manufacturers and several generations of server infrastructure. WQIS was also running a virtual desktop solution on older hardware and software versions.
I approached this project with an open mind and considered three options for the new infrastructure.
- Traditional On-Premise: Storage, Compute, Network in a Top-Tier Colocation Facility
- Boutique Cloud Providers: CDI and similar IaaS MSPs
- Large-Scale Public Cloud: AWS, Azure, Google
I also took a look at our software providers to see who could offer us a SaaS solution that would meet our availability, security, and compliance requirements. I outsourced email, archiving, and unified communications as quickly as I could.
Having previously worked with CDI, I knew their team of Solutions Architects could help with the design and deployment of the traditional on-premise option along with a very necessary upgrade of my VDI infrastructure.
We began by pricing out an on-premise solution based on the principles of Converged Infrastructure (VCE’s Vblock architecture). I knew this solution would work and that I could expect predictable performance. But, I also had to address Disaster Recovery and monitoring/management of the new infrastructure and face the reality that in 3-4 years it would be time to engage once again in a costly and potentially disruptive technology refresh. CDI offered managed services to deal with patching and alerting, but I still felt that leveraging hardware and paying a data center was unnecessary.
I also looked at re-platforming my apps and moving them to large-scale public cloud, either AWS or Microsoft Azure, but quickly realized that my requirements for elasticity and scale (not much) and control over security and compliance (a great deal) as well as my own comfort and familiarity with VMware and associated tools, made these solutions too complex, expensive, and disruptive to our core business, which led us to the boutique cloud providers.
I issued an RFP to several firms and after significant research, hands-on demos, and contract term negotiation, agreed on CDI Managed Services.
As someone in the service business, I understand vendor leverage and I liked the fact that I could withdraw from managing a data center while still maintaining control over my critical workloads and holding local individuals accountable for the care and feeding of my operating systems. CDI also gave me the ability to define my own RTO and RPOs and initiate a DR event whenever I wanted.
Over the past three years, I developed strong relationships with my Service Delivery Manager (SDM) and my Technical Account Manager (TAM), which have essentially fulfilled the roles of an Infrastructure Manager and a Lead Engineer without having to hire FTEs. Had I gone with the traditional on-premise option, I would be preparing for another major tech refresh next year and my infrastructure costs would be approximately 60 percent higher than they are today. Instead, I am revamping our entire core application stack and deploying innovative solutions that will improve our customer experience and prepare WQIS for the next wave of growth.