Faction - DirectBuy - v1
Transcription
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 Copyright 2015 Faction, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other logos and trademarks are the property of the respective trademark owners.