A COST VERSUS BENEFIT CASE STUDY
SAVINGS OF $372,080 PER ANNUM
The Problem:
Our new client’s CFO asked inSync to analyze their information technology infrastructure & expense. Their apps & data were being hosted by a 3rd party Cloud provider in Las Vegas. They were having many problems with their environment including slowness, connectivity problems, & servers going down.
Their Cloud hosting expense was $32,000 per month.
Our client also had 2 full time employees for desktop support, & a chief engineer. Those positions were eliminated with our IT support & management. They were also paying their 3rd party provider $12,000 per month for desktop support. Their contract was a bit obtuse because their 3rd party provider was allowed to deem anything out of scope. A third monthly invoice was given for the Time & Materials support that was out of scope – the billable rates varied from $175 to $200 per hour, and averaged $3,500 per month.
How We Helped
This client was a manufacturer & had four different locations in two states. So rather than an on premise solution, our solution was to purchase a state of the art, 3 server Starwinds cluster solution which is hosted at Databank, a best in class co-location facility located in Irvine.
This solution provided the redundancy, a secure hosting platform & 24/7/365 uptime…And with state of the art equipment, it was a much faster solution. Their monthly expense went from $32,000/month to $1,450/month.
The hardware & software cluster solution, including the co-location build out investment was $282,817. That number includes the labor for the colo build out, data migration, testing & debugging.
Cloud to Co-location Facility Savings
First Year’s Savings Eliminating Cloud Hosting Fees
Annual Hosting Fees $389,480
Less: Hardware & Software Investment $282,817
Annual Co-lo fees $17,400
Year 1 Savings $89,263
Years 2-5 Annual Savings $372,080/year
Total Savings Over 5 Years = $1,577,583
IT Support & Services Savings
As stated above, our client was paying for $12,000/month for desktop support, & approximately $3,500/month for Time & Materials support. We took over all of their responsibilities, server & desktop support, for $15,000/month, a savings of $500/month. The client’s internal staff of three was laid off resulting in more savings.
Our co-location & cluster solution, & a simplified network infrastructure, resolved many of their connectivity & printing issues. Their tickets went from a sustained 150 tickets outstanding to 40 tickets.
What We Accomplished
Performed a deep dive audit documenting their 44 virtual servers in Cloud facilities;
Created a detailed project plan including the hardware & software investment required for the three server cluster solution & the co-lo build out;
Created a migration plan, including testing & debugging, to migrate their virtual servers to the cluster solution;
For a disaster recovery/business continuity solution, we are replicating their servers to a Cloud-based solution for $4,000/year;
Their 3 physical clustered servers are being monitored 24/7 with a cloud-based system for $60/month;
The 44 virtual machines are being monitored with a Nagios solution that is constantly being tuned & upgraded for additional monitoring points.
Our biggest accomplishment: Taking over an environment that was unmanaged for 5 years, that was unstable & aged. We continue to upgrade, improve, & stabilize their once problematic IT environment but it has been greatly improved. It’s a process.