Click here to load reader
Upload
quest-cloud-solutions-ltd
View
119
Download
7
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd's Cloud Computing Case Study - Amoria Bond, an Executive Search Consultancy firm spanning several countries and continents, utilise the Quest Cloud platform for their entire IT provision. Read the Cloud Computing Case Study for more information.
Citation preview
Amoria Bond – A Global, Multi-Office Executive Search Company Case Study: How a Cloud
Computing Solution Provided a Resilient, Redundant, Secure and Highly Available IT
Platform for 80 Users over 4 Offices
Company Background
Amoria Bond, a
multinational, multi-
award-winning Recruitment and Executive Search Services
firm, provides specialist and bespoke contract/freelance
and permanent recruitment services into a number of
impressive private sector clients, specialising in IT and IT
Management, Banking and Finance, Engineering and
Power, and SAP/ERP sectors. Clients include household
names, multinational retailers, and SAP. The company is
listed in the Recruiter FAST 50 list as a result of their rapid
expansion.
The company commenced trading in 2006 and engaged
Quest to provide and manage their IT platform. Quest has
seen the company grow from the 5 user firm it started out
as to the multinational brand it has become; the company
now employs around 90 members of staff spread across
multiple offices, including Manchester (Head Office),
London, Amsterdam, Cologne, and Singapore.
Existing IT Solution Amoria Bond went through a number of phases with their
IT thanks to their incredibly impressive growth. Following
multiple upgrades and server rollouts, the infrastructure at
60 users included Microsoft Windows File Servers, Terminal
Servers, an Exchange Server, and a Microsoft SQL Database
Server. Applications used were Microsoft Office, generic
day-to-day office applications, and their recruitment
database, RDB ProNet. At 60 users, and two new offices on
the cards, the decision was made to move to “the cloud” as
too much strain was being placed upon the Manchester
connections, and the existing infrastructure offered little in
terms of office survivability, resilience, or redundancy.
Requirements and Primary Concerns After a detailed discussion with the business, including the
Management Team and the Users, Quest Cloud Solutions
Ltd identified four key areas of concern that the company
had in mind for the new system;
Resilience, Redundancy, and Availability
Given that Amoria Bond works in the fast-paced
recruitment sector, the company knew they needed an IT
platform that would be resilient against hardware failure,
and highly available to ensure maximum productivity and
profitability. Remote/home working was already offered,
but felt clunky due to the huge strain the additional offices
were placing on the Manchester office connection. Data
redundancy was of utmost importance as the company
relies heavily upon their recruitment data to make their
tight deadlines.
Security, Backup, and Disaster Recovery Planning
Amoria Bond’s database is the company’s lifeblood and
incredibly valuable to them, but also to their competitors.
Industrial espionage is a real concern and therefore they
needed a solution that would be very well protected both
physically and virtually. In addition to this, the solution
needed to account for a disaster recovery plan if the data
was to become corrupt or sabotaged.
Connectivity and Bandwidth
The existing offices were already straining the connections
into the Manchester Head Office; with two new offices on
the cards, a solution which would remove that strain was
needed.
Scalability, including Hardware & Software Upgrades
Thanks to their substantial growth, Amoria Bond had
already been through a number of hardware and software
upgrades; Quest had provided them with a recent
traditional IT proposal which allowed for additional growth;
however it came in at over £120k over three years and
required substantial upfront investment. Amoria Bond
wanted a solution that would scale with their business
without the need for future-proofing their hardware and
software purchases upfront.
Our Solution The proposed solution effectively replicated Amoria Bond’s
existing infrastructure as detailed previously, but with
cloud-based Virtual Private Servers (VPS) rather than
physical hardware.
Resilience, Redundancy, and Availability
Utilising the Quest Cloud platform meant that the solution
would be highly available, making use of the datacentre’s
redundant power, resilient and redundant super-fast
Internet connectivity, and state-of-the-art fire suppression
technology. Incredibly smart resilience features within the
VMware virtualisation platform meant that each VPS would
draw its computing resources from a series of physical host
servers; as a result, the VPS would be protected against
physical host server failure; if one of the physical host
servers in the cloud platform started to fail, monitoring
tools within VMware would move the VPS to another
functioning server to ensure it kept running. A RAID
configuration was used for the data storage in Quest’s
Storage Area Network (SAN), ensuring a high level of data
resilience and an efficient read/write speed.
Quest Cloud
Server
(VM)
File
Server/
Domain
Controller
(VM)
Terminal
Server
(VM)
Head Office
(Manchester)
London Office
#1
Internet
Connection
Singapore Office –
Utilising WAN Acceleration
Technology here and
in the Quest Cloud Platform
*Further explained in the
“Benefits to the Company”
Section
Database
Server
(VM)
Internet
Connection
London Office
#2
Internet
Connection
Internet
Connection
Security, Backup, and Disaster Recovery Planning
The cloud solution proposed to the client included an IT-
related backup plan through the use of Microsoft’s Shadow
Copy, which meant the system would take snap-shots of
the system at regular intervals. This would allow users to
go back in time and manually retrieve individually deleted
and/or modified files, up to around 30 days’ previously, as
well as provide the company as a whole with the ability to
restore to one of many potential restore points following a
major issue.
Connectivity and Bandwidth
The connectivity network within the Datacentre provides
the Quest Cloud platform with access to two separate 10
Gigabit networks, provided by two different Internet
Service Providers (ISPs); this provides the cloud platform
with resilient and redundant bandwidth and lightning-fast
connectivity. As a result of hosting the IT platform in the
Quest Cloud network, users at all offices would now
connect to the cloud platform via their own office’s
connections.
Scalability, including Hardware & Software Upgrades
A benefit of using virtualisation and VPS technology was
that the VPS could be upgraded on-the-fly as and when
needed, without the need for CAPEX, providing a truly
scalable solution that would grow and shrink with the
business. In addition, the company would now benefit
from usage-based licensing, meaning Microsoft licensing
would receive free rolling upgrades as and when desired by
the business, with the hardware upgraded when needed.
Benefits to the Company The successful and well-planned rollout and migration of
this solution ensured the minimum amount of downtime
possible while providing the company with a highly
available hosted IT platform that is resilient, redundant,
ultra-secure and highly available. The business now also
benefits from rolling hardware upgrades as required by
existing installed software, and software upgrades when
desired by the company, and the business now has
complete peace of mind in regards to the physical and
virtual security of their service network. As a result, each
office has access to a centralised server environment but
isn’t relying on the Main Office to be available, resulting in
increased productivity and morale within the workforce,
and therefore increased the company’s turnover.
Thanks to Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd.’s ability to think
outside of the box and develop a tailored solution based on
the company’s needs, wants, budget, and existing concerns,
Amoria Bond now benefits from a highly available IT
platform that exactly fits their needs. As a result, the
company has since expanded to 90 users, and successfully
opened an office in Singapore; this has been made possible
by utilising state-of-the-art Cisco WAN (Wide Area
Network) Acceleration technology, which has dramatically
reduced the latency that was present between the
Singapore office and the Quest datacentre (due to the
substantial geographic distance between them).
For information on how your business could benefit from
a tailored cloud solution, please have a look at our
website and blog at www.questcloudcomputing.co.uk, or
get in touch with our Sales Team on 0845 521 6000, or
email us at [email protected].