Epoch Solutions is an innovative technology company specializing in advanced mapping and analytics software. As the firm experienced rapid growth, their existing on-premises SQL Server environment began to show limitations in performance, scalability, and security.
Cloud303 was approached by Epoch Solutions, a forward-thinking technology company, to migrate their IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The objective was to utilize the capabilities of Microsoft Workloads on AWS to enhance performance, scalability, and security. The migration addressed critical challenges that Epoch Solutions faced with their on-premises SQL Server, including limited transaction capacity, delayed product development cycles, and vulnerabilities in data security. Post-migration, the system saw a four-fold increase in transaction capacity, 30% acceleration in product development, near-zero levels for RPO and RTO, and a 60% reduction in overhead costs related to license management.
Epoch Solutions' on-premises SQL Server environment started to show signs of strain under the weight of the firm's growth. The system could only manage an estimated 500 transactions per second, causing performance to suffer during peak demand periods. Furthermore, the lack of isolated environments for QA and testing contributed to a 25% delay in product development cycles. The company's data security also came into question with three minor breaches in the past year. Lastly, their SQL Server's costly and complicated license management led to a 15% increase in overhead costs. Most crucially, Epoch Solutions lacked a reliable disaster recovery strategy, making them vulnerable to severe data loss and downtime in case of major outages.
Automation Expertise
Cloud303 excels in automating tedious and complex tasks, making development and operations more efficient. Our expertise in CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code, containerization and automated testing ensures a faster time-to-market and more robust DevOps strategy. 
Scalability and Performance
With a deep understanding of microservices, containerization, and orchestration, Cloud303 provides scalable solutions that can handle varying workloads without sacrificing performance, ensuring that your systems can handle future demands. 
Collaboration and Culture
Recognizing that DevOps is as much about people and culture as it is about tools and processes, Cloud303 helps foster a culture of collaboration between development and operations teams to facilitate better teamwork and collective ownership of projects. 
Proven Track Record
Cloud303 has a strong history of successful partnerships within the Microsoft industry. Our commitment to excellence, reliability, and client-focused solutions have made us a trusted partner. Cloud303's engagements follow a streamlined five-phase lifecycle: Requirements, Design, Implementation, Testing, and Maintenance. Initially, a comprehensive assessment is conducted through a Well-Architected Review to identify client needs. This is followed by a scoping call to fine-tune the architectural design, upon which a Statement of Work (SoW) is agreed and signed.
The implementation phase kicks in next, closely adhering to the approved designs. Rigorous testing ensures that all components meet the client's specifications and industry standards. Finally, clients have the option to either manage the deployed solutions themselves or to enroll in Cloud303's Managed Services for ongoing maintenance, an option many choose due to their high satisfaction with the services provided.
Designed for Reliability
Cloud303 developed a comprehensive migration plan, moving their SQL Server from on-premises to Amazon RDS and EC2. We implemented SQL Server failover clustering and Multi-AZ deployments for high availability and seamless failover during any outages.
Epoch Solutions required their ArcGIS application, a powerful mapping and analytics software by ESRI, to be highly available. This GIS (Geographic Information System) software provides an infrastructure for creating and sharing maps, analyzing mapped information, using maps and geographic information in various applications, and managing geographic information in a database. To achieve this, the application was deployed on Windows Server 2022 on EC2, spanning multiple Availability Zones (AZs). This not only improved application performance but also ensured resilience to single AZ failures.
In our commitment to enhancing performance and reliability, Cloud303 deployed Auto Scaling Groups for the application servers running ArcGIS. This AWS service allows the application to scale its capacity up or down automatically according to defined conditions. It ensures that the application has the right amount of resources to handle the current traffic demand. This strategy not only improved performance during peak demand periods but also significantly reduced costs by scaling down resources when demand is low.
Disaster Recovery:
To enhance disaster recovery, Cloud303 set up Amazon RDS to create a read replica of the database in the US-East-1 region. This replica would be activated and promoted to the master should the primary region (us-east-2) suffer an outage. Coupled with this, Cloud303 deployed the Disaster Recovery Service for cross-region replication. This service continuously backs up all EC2 instances running the application and the database in US-East-2 to US-East-1.
In order to streamline license management, Cloud303 implemented a cost-pass strategy, where the licensing costs were transferred to end-user clients. This innovative approach effectively reduced Epoch's licensing overhead, freeing up resources for other critical business operations.
Furthermore, to fortify the system's security architecture, Cloud303 deployed a gamut of robust AWS security services. AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) was installed on the Application Load Balancers, protecting against common web exploits. AWS Config was utilized for continuous monitoring and assessment of Epoch's AWS resource configurations, ensuring compliance. AWS GuardDuty, a threat detection service, protected against malicious or unauthorized behavior, and AWS CloudTrail enabled governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of the AWS account. This comprehensive, layered security approach offers robust protection against a wide array of potential threats.
Iit was gratifying to see how our tailored AWS solutions drastically improved Epoch Solutions' operational efficiency and security. Our focus was not just on the technology but on how it could drive business value. The four-fold increase in transaction capacity and significant cost reductions are testaments to the power of a well-executed cloud migration.
Post-migration, Epoch Solutions enjoyed transformative improvements. Their system capacity increased to handle up to 2000 transactions per second, a four-fold increase from their previous capacity. This increase was made possible by leveraging Auto Scaling Groups for the application servers running ArcGIS, which allowed for automatic scaling based on traffic demand.
The creation of isolated environments for development, QA, and production accelerated product development cycles by 30%. A considerable part of this acceleration was due to the improved ability to conduct parallel work in these separate environments.
The enhanced disaster recovery strategy reduced the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to near-zero levels, ensuring business continuity even during major disruptions. Furthermore, the new setup provided a highly resilient system with zero data breaches post-migration, demonstrating the robustness of the deployed AWS security services - AWS WAF, Config, GuardDuty, and CloudTrail.
Finally, the innovative license management approach reduced overhead by 60%, leading to substantial cost savings. By passing licensing costs to end-user clients, Epoch Solutions was able to reallocate resources to other critical business operations.
