Faction - DirectBuy - v1

CASE STUDY
RETAIL & ECOMMERCE
FACTION’S CLOUD DRIVES DRAMATIC
RESULTS FOR NATIONAL BUYER’S
CLUB, DIRECTBUY
DirectBuy receives cutting edge cloud
services on Faction cloud infrastructure,
white-labeled by partner Komodo Cloud.
Challenge
DirectBuy, a leading international members-only consumer buyers’ club,
represents over 700 manufacturers and their authorized suppliers; over
80 franchise locations in the US and Canada; and one million products
SKUs. The company’s 43 years in business are a testament to DirectBuy’s
desire to not only meet, but also exceed their members’ and franchise
owners’ needs. Its core business relies heavily on its ecommerce web
site in which members have access to more than one million products,
all without hidden retail markups from traditional retailers. DirectBuy’s
website also serves as a resource for its franchise owners to build their
businesses by leveraging DirectBuy’s training, support and incentives.
Because of DirectBuy’s long and successful growth pattern, the company was pushed beyond what its IT infrastructure was designed to
handle. The company’s infrastructure needed improving in order to be
able to take its core business to the next level and deliver innovative and
efficient ways to keep increasing value and resources for its members. In
this old environment, 65% of DirectBuy’s IT systems were either out of
warranty or support contracts, and 45% of those were older than 5 years.
“We had a handle on what our systems could do as well as what their
limitations were, but needed an expert team to guide us in utilizing
technology more aptly and efficiently,” comments Dr. Armin Roeseler,
CIO for DirectBuy. “17% of our infrastructure was end of life—beyond
the timeframe that our various vendors could support. We were not
positioned to support the new initiatives and modern direction that
DirectBuy’s executives wanted to take the company.” In addition, DirectBuy’s overall IT spend was very high since there were quite a few service
provider contracts, preventing the company from capitalizing on volume
discounts.
DirectBuy turned to Komodo Cloud for assistance. Komodo Cloud, a
managed service provider focusesd on professional IT services, and
helps enterprises like DirectBuy leverage technology to transform their
CASE STUDY
FACTION’S CLOUD DRIVES DRAMATIC RESULTS FOR NATIONAL BUYER’S CLUB, DIRECTBUY
PA G E 2
businesses. Using enterprise-class cloud solutions powered by
Faction, Komodo Cloud served as a hands-on technical extension to DirectBuy’s IT organization and worked closely to find
a most optimal solution.
“Our main goal,” continued Roeseler, “is always to ultimately
support customers. We knew we needed a robust, flexible and
secure infrastructure and by working closely with Komodo
Cloud and Faction, we were convinced that the cloud was the
vehicle to bring us forward into the future.”
Solution
DirectBuy had a very a tight timeframe of just 60 days to plan,
build, migrate and fully operationalize its entire production
environment in the cloud. While the company didn’t have
experience operating a cloud environment, they knew that
cloud offered many advantages. “DirectBuy needed to be able
to rely on its partners to make this cloud adoption happen –
partners who were well-versed in various technologies – elasticity, on-demand infrastructure, virtualization, set up, storage,
networking and operational components including monitoring
and maintenance. We found such a partner with Komodo
Cloud,” stated Dr. Roeseler.
Komodo, as a Faction channel partner, implemented Faction’s
White Cloud service for DirectBuy, providing a very resilient IaaS cloud platform for DirectBuy to manage their high
performance production workloads. Faction’s White Cloud is
a dedicated private cloud service, designed for use expressly
by its white-label partners like Komodo Cloud. This infrastructure-as-a-service platform delivers on-demand computing,
network and storage resources and is backed by 100% Service
Level Guarantees with maximum reliability built in.
In addition, Komodo integrated Faction to Faction Direct Connect layer 2 dedicated private connections. This was established across all of DirectBuy’s IT environments, for seamless
interconnection of their private, public, and on-premise
resources onto a single global network, using their carrier of
choice. Through this patented technology, DirectBuy was able
to bring its network ‘as-is’ using its existing IP schema, vLAN
topology, and router, firewall, VPN architectures. Komodo
also made use of the inter-node L2 connectivity to deliver its
Backup-as-a-Service securely into the DirectBuy cloud platform, thus providing DirectBuy with a comprehensive data
protection solution.
“By building robust platforms, such as what we designed for
DirectBuy atop Faction’s N+1 cloud infrastructure, we truly
have a winning combination,” stated Eric Hughes, CEO for Komodo Cloud. “This solution allows Komodo Cloud to support
these very types of end-user clients and meet their complex
requirements,”
Results
By helping DirectBuy migrate to a 100% cloud operation, Komodo Cloud and Faction put the company on the cutting-edge in
leveraging technology to support its hundreds of members and
franchise owners. Moving away from its outdated infrastructure,
DirectBuy realized $2.5M in CAPEX avoidance and immediately
achieved a significant reduction in infrastructure related problem tickets - quickly realizing very tangible business benefits.
From a service/support perspective, DirectBuy has realized a
3-5 fold improvement on overall website response, thus improving member experiences. As a major ecommerce website,
it is critical for DirectBuy to have fast load and response times.
As DirectBuy’s business grows and more people come to its
website, DirectBuy can scale up on the fly, no need to take
everything down and put big servers in place. DirectBuy is now
a lot more nimble.
Transitioning to an all-cloud IT environment has had profound
implications on DirectBuy’s ability to serve their franchises as
well as their members. DirectBuy is now able to address key
areas that they would have never been able to tackle before
when the website was so slow. With the new cloud platform, the
company improved its search and navigation capabilities, allowing users to get to the next level of sophistication with access to
more capabilities than before. DirectBuy can now offload and
focus on their core competencies and consider new ways to
truly deliver innovative user experiences across the board.
$2.5MILLION
A MO UNT O F RE A L I Z E D CA PE X AVO I DANCE
PA G E 3
DirectBuy has experienced numerous benefits by placing its
production workloads in Komodo Cloud, powered by Faction,
including:
» 40% reduction in IT operating expenses
» 3-5x improvement on website responsiveness and
performance
» $2.5M CAPEX avoidance by eliminating the need for ‘in-place’
system upgrades
» Almost 100% reduction in core infrastructure problem tickets,
thus improving customer experiences
» 80% reduction in time to market, which drastically increases
business agility
» Provisioning of disaster recovery capabilities across two
geographic regions
WITH CLOUD ARCHITECTURE, DIRECTBUY CAN BE THE
CLUB OF THE FUTURE
“DirectBuy can now be the Club of the Future — with our cloud
architecture, we can dare to dream bigger to further support
our franchises. We are now in a much better position to think
about such things, as how we can serve up more applications.
VDI is a huge enabling component, which we can now roll
out and serve up to the entire desktop environment, all from
Faction’s cloud node. Desktop infrastructure will be very
simple; all we will need is a desktop that doesn’t need to be
high powered and an Internet connection, with no specific
Operating system needed. This will lead to huge ramifications,
with respect to simplifying infrastructure at Club level,”
commented Dr. Roeseler.
» Establishment of best practices to use across each
department
» Achievement of PCI compliance
In addition, the new Faction/Komodo cloud solution was PCI compliant, which was almost impossible to achieve in DirectBuy’s previous, cumbersome environment, where compliance was prohibitive
from both complexity and cost perspectives. With careful network
planning and guidance, DirectBuy built its new platform from the
ground up and established best practices, which afforded more
control and greater ability to be more nimble and reliable overall.
CAPEX Avoidance
» DirectBuy would have had to make a $2.5m investment to
upgrade and keep the existing environment
Reduction In IT and Operating Costs
» Migrating to the cloud, with the right partner can improve
efficiencies and reduce costs in many key IT areas
Faster Response Times = Increased Agility
» With Komodo’s cloud platform powered by Faction, DirectBuy
vastly improved website performance and customer experiences
Achieve Compliance in One Fell Swoop
» Adhering to compliance and regulations can be prohibitive
due to complexities and costs; with Faction’s fully compliant
platform this can be achieved faster and more cost efficient
» Type II SSAE 16 and SOC 2, PCI and HIPAA compliant data
center operations
» Achieve PCI compliancy through Komodo’s platform
architectural design procedures
“LEVERAGING FACTION’S LAYER
2 DIRECT CONNECT WAS
INVALUABLE TO DIRECTBUY AS
IT PROVIDED A QUICK PATHWAY
FOR MIGRATION. WE LITERALLY
COMPLETED THE VIRTUALIZATION
PROCESS START TO FINISH IN
JUST ABOUT 60 DAYS, WHICH
COULD NORMALLY TAKE 6
MONTHS.”
DR. ARMIN ROESELER
CIO, DIRECTBUY
PA G E 4
“IT’S ESSENTIAL THAT YOUR CLOUD PARTNER IS WILLING TO GO OUTSIDE
TYPICAL CONFIGURATIONS TO TRULY UNDERSTAND YOUR UNIQUE
REQUIREMENTS. IF FACTION HAD GONE ‘BY THE BOOK’ THEN OUR CLOUDENABLEMENT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN SUCH A SHORT TIME.
THERE WAS VERY LOW BUREAUCRACY, WHICH WAS QUITE REFRESHING.”
DR. ARMIN ROESELER
CIO, DIRECTBUY
ABOUT FAC T I O N
Faction is an enterprise-class IaaS cloud service provider offering private, public, & hybrid cloud solutions through channel
partners. At Faction we supply cloud the way you want it with
extreme performance, deep control, and broad customization
capabilities. When you join the Faction fold, you take back the
keys to your kingdom. Reign as supreme commander in chief
of your cloud. No compromises. No exceptions.
Faction is the only cloud that offers patented plug-and-play
direct connections (via layer 2) into its cloud resulting in huge
time savings (no time spent re-configuring everything)! With
Type II SSAE 16 and SOC 1 & 2 compliant cloud nodes in eight
geographies across the United States and in Europe (Seattle,
Santa Clara, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, New Jersey, New York,
and the United Kingdom), Faction offers both Cisco UCS and
Open Compute platforms, is a Platinum-level NetApp Service
Provider, and is VMware vCloud® Powered. For more information, visit www.factioninc.com or call (855) 532-4734.
ABOUT DI REC T BU Y, IN C .
A BO UT KO MO D O C LO UD
DirectBuy provides its members with outstanding service,
selection and value. At over 90 locations throughout North
America, DirectBuy members pay confidential dealer prices,
with no hidden retail markup, combined with an amazing selection. DirectBuy’s commitment to service excellence ensures
that members have access to unparalleled quality and choice
while being guided by experts in purchasing and design. Our
members select from over 1 million products from 700 popular
brands in the US and 500 in Canada. DirectBuy also provides
lifestyle-enhancing benefits including travel packages, home
improvement services, and much more.
Komodo Cloud, LLC is a provider of IT transition and transformation services. Born in the cloud, Komodo enables its
enterprise clients to set up cloud assets, provides subscription-based compute and storage services, and provides IT
business processing and subscription-based software solutions. The company is headquartered in Rolling Hills Estates,
CA with satellite offices in Chicago and San Jose. For more
information, visit www.komodocloud.com call 424-488-7755,
or email [email protected].
O U R PA R T N E R S
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