Streamlining IT infrastructure

Context 

iOCO partnered with a leading mortgage provider, to streamline their disaster recovery strategy and modernise their infrastructure. This case study explores how iOCO leveraged Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate the client’s primary data centre workloads, transforming their IT environment for increased efficiency and scalability.

Challenge

The client previously relied on two data centres – a primary data centre and a secondary data centre used for disaster recovery. The secondary data centre’s hosting contract was nearing its end, and its aging infrastructure required significant investment.

Typically, companies facing data centre refresh or hardware limitations consider migrating to the cloud as a cost-saving opportunity. However, the client took a proactive approach, utilising the cloud migration as a strategic step to optimise their overall infrastructure and disaster recovery strategy.

To address these challenges, the client sought a cost-effective solution that would:

• Reduce hardware dependency:Eliminate the need for ongoing investment in new hardware for maintenance and refresh cycles.
• Enhance disaster recovery: Maintain a robust disaster recover strategy while optimising existing infrastructure.
• Improve scalability: Future-proof their IT environment to accommodate growth.

Solution

iOCO collaborated with the client to develop a cloud-based solution leveraging AWS. This involved:

• Primary data centre migration: Migrating all workloads from the client’s primary data centre to AWS. This established AWS as their new primary data centre, eliminating the need for investment in hardware refresh at the aging secondary site.
• Enhanced disaster recovery: Repurposing the existing primary data center as the secondary data centre for disaster recovery. This provided cost-effective redundancy and improved business continuity.
• AWS FSX Utilization: Leveraging AWS FSX for Windows File Shares (FSx for Windows) to ensure seamless migration and maintain data resiliency for Windows-based workloads across multiple availability zones within AWS.

Benefits

By partnering with iOCO and migrating to AWS, the client achieved:

• Reduced hardware costs: Eliminated ongoing capital expenditure associated with hardware refresh cycles.
• Improved disaster recovery: Maintained a robust disaster recovery strategy with optimised resource utilization.
• Enhanced scalability: Leveraged the inherent scalability of AWS to accommodate future growth.
• Increased efficiency: Streamlined IT operations with a centralized, cloud-based infrastructure.

Future optimisation

Together with iOCO, the client planned to further leverage their data by implementing a data virtualisation platform, within their new AWS environment. This will enable them to unlock additional data insights and drive further business value.

Conclusion

iOCO's successful migration of the client’s data centre to AWS demonstrates the power of cloud adoption for optimising IT infrastructure. The client now benefits from a cost-effective, highly scalable, and disaster-resilient solution, with a foundation for unlocking further value from their data through advanced analytics.