Nearshore Cloud Computing and Security: Azure Migration

As more and more companies make the decision to migrate their on-premise data centers to cloud systems, cloud adoption continues to be an enigma for some. After all, how could a business possibly run smoothly without traditional hardware or an onsite server? Sounds hard to believe, but it's a reality, and one that can change any company for the better. The cloud is made of servers, software and data storage centers that are accessed over the Internet, providing many benefits that include cost reduction, scalability, data security, work force and data mobility.

The grass may be greener when going cloud, but simply taking the leap does not guarantee a triumphant transition. Ensuring you go for the right cloud services provider, as well as the right cloud tools based on your very specific needs, must be considered as critical first steps towards adoption’s long-term success.

The cloud services provider market is broad, including giants like Microsoft, Amazon and Google. And the answer to choosing the correct cloud provider is a defined selection process appropriately tailored towards your own company’s and project’s unique set of needs, where the right tools must be considered in order to optimize cloud costs.

And in many cases after cloud migration, a particular phenomena can occur, called cloud waste, which refers to a business consuming more cloud resources than it actually needs to run smoothly. For instance, having virtual machines that are much larger than they need to be. A recent study by Gartner estimates that globally, enterprises waste almost 35% of their total cloud spend, with the over provisioning of cloud infrastructure being the leading cause. This cloud waste can be addressed quickly through effective cloud management, which will result in reduced cloud computing costs and optimized performance.

Through the next case study we want to showcase the importance of trusting an experienced cloud development team to guarantee data security and ensure you’re getting the most out of your cloud investments by identifying areas where savings can be made and utilizing the correct tools for your specific needs. After all, like anything else in life, cloud computing has its own learning curve.

About The Company

The iTexico client is a safety and compliance mobile tools provider for the construction industry that helps contractors improve safety culture, reduce accidents, and eliminate fatalities.

Business Challenge

The client had an application hosted on Amazon, utilizing two EC2 virtual computing environments (also known as instances). The first one hosting two applications and the second one hosting a large database, with high fixed monthly costs.

The application had many security issues, leaving them wide open to many Trojan viruses infecting every computer they touched and leaving field employees unable to do their jobs with a serverless application.

What We Did

Applied security layers to the application: this step of the process represented important challenges as the service was constantly hacked by the previous application vendor.
Proposed a move to Microsoft Azure in order to reduce fixed costs of virtual machines.
Created a virtual machine in Azure.
Created a cluster: two virtual machines working as one.
Created a honeypot: a third ghost server in the same location; to redirect traffic coming from unsafe sources locations, that would immobilize the virus.
Added 6 layers of security: multi factor authentication, port access, service access.
Applied a load balancer on all layers in a fourth instance to address high traffic.
Moved the client’s current database to Database as a Service from Azure, weighing 2.5 TB.
Created a VPN for secure access for specific locations, such as the administration site.

Benefits of Virtual Machines

A virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system, creating a computer within a computer. It runs in a window, like any other program. This service gives you the flexibility of virtualizing without the costs of maintaining the physical hardware that runs it.

Some VM uses and benefits include:

Development and testing of applications: VMs offer a safe and easy way to create and test applications, since their content is sandboxed from the rest of the system, meaning that the software inside a vm cannot tamper with the computer itself.
Running applications in the cloud with a scalable, pay-as-you-go model: when app demand can fluctuate, it makes sense to run it on a VM and simply scale from one to thousands of VM instances in minutes if needed.
Extended datacenters: VMs can easily be connected to your organization’s network in order to extend capacity.

Benefits of Azure Databases as a Service

Microsoft Azure offers secure and enterprise-ready database services that are fully managed, allowing you to invest the time you would use for management in more determinant tasks for your business, like customer service and experience.

Azure databases support quick scalability and global distribution without costly downtime, and include built-in security with automatic monitoring and threat detection.

How We Did It

The iTexico solution team included:

Database administrator
DevOps engineer
Solutions architect

Tech stack:

WildFire JavaScript

Timeframe:

Planning: 2 weeks
Execution: 4 hours with no down time

Business Impact

- 73% cost savings month over month.

- 99.99% uptime.

- 100% support ticket reduction.

- Highly stable environment.

Wrapping Up

Shifting your business to the cloud is not a matter of "if", but "when". The good news is there's a vast pool of expert cloud service providers to choose from, with the market only expected to keep growing: the public cloud services market worldwide is predicted to increase 17% in 2020 to total $266.4 billion, according to Gartner. But ultimately, your company's unique goals, needs, projects, strategies, and approaches will be the determining factors in following the right path ahead.

If you think cloud adoption is the next step for your business and wish to explore different cloud service providers, know more about Nearshore+ cloud optimization, or how to ensure efficient cloud usage, contact us here.

Want to learn more about the wide range of solutions that Microsoft Azure offers? Check this article and explore Azure Cloud Migration.