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Case Study

CloudVelocity Cuts Total Migration Time by 66%


Objective: Solution: Achieve increased agility and reduction in operating expense by migrating 50 server app and services from co-location to AWS CloudVelocity One Hybrid Cloud
increase. According to Samir, We are also seeing new demand from customers to be able to access their services from a range of devices including smart phones and tablets. Security requirements have also adjusted to the change with more use of encryption and more security built into the applications.

QL2 Software, based in Seattle Washington, has been delivering market intelligence services to clients since 2001. Starting in 2012, QL2 launched a new strategic plan to grow its customer base with improved product performance and simultaneously reduce its total cost of service. The most signicant change was to move the existing client applications from a traditional company managed data center to a hosted cloud delivery service model. In 2012 I began the plan to move our existing customer applications from a co-location data center facility to a cloud based deployment model, said Samir Bhakta, Director of Operations and Information Technology. By analyzing our current costs, I found that we were spending a large amount of time on hardware related work that was not revenue generating. We are a small company and we wish to deliver new services quickly, so it was strategic to switch man hours from labor intensive hardware related work to revenue generating application improvements.

Cloud Migration Decision The decision to move to a cloud based delivery model began almost two years ago. The biggest complaint from customers was performance. Dynamic reporting, scheduled analysis results and on demand analysis are just a few of the services our customers expect. With a cloud delivery model, we can quickly add servers to match workload demand. This helps with our existing customers and also helps attract new customers, said Samir. During the testing phase Samir became familiar with solutions and tools to help with cloud migrations, including platforms to help move data and others to extend security. I learned about CloudVelocQL2 Software Background ity from my previous QL2 Software delivers Amazon account manager analytics and market Reduced cloud migration costs by 75% and I decided to give it a try, intelligence services to over Reduced cloud migration time said Samir. We have 100s 300 clients worldwide. Its of different applications customers operate in key requirements by 66% which have been customized industries including travel, AWS ROI shifted from years to months over the past years for our retail, energy and other price customers. Our major sensitive industries. The core challenge was to manage QL2 application performs in applications that are not well documented, if documented at depth pricing and data analysis. Airline ticket pricing is one all. The additional effort would have added 6-9 months to example where customers rely on QL2 analytics to make the total project and the learning curve would have been rapid price decisions. Petroleum is another example of a enormous. commodity where prices change quickly and involve During the migration, Samir reported he did not have a millions of dollars. need to use the auto-discovery features of CloudVelocity; From its start in 2001, QL2s data centers supported rather he preferred to manually create his own blue print of about one TB of total customer data. Now in 2013 the QL2 the 50-60 servers he wanted to migrate to Amazon Web data centers support one PB of data a 1,000 fold

CloudVelocity Software, 2350 Mission College Blvd., Ste. 1250, Santa Clara, CA 95054 408.841.4800 www.cloudvelocity.com
Copyright 2013 CloudVelocity Inc. All rights reserved.

QL2 Case Study


Services. Some of the systems were cloned as-is and others were changed a bit for performance and application improvements. Samir reported that the data synchronization process performed by CloudVelocity moved 2 TB of data and took about 4 hours. Actual system cloning took just minutes and system start up and DNS cutover were instantaneous. Using CloudVelocity, Samir was able to complete the migration six months earlier than planned, reducing the total migration time by 66%. The new found time was used to make improvements to the applications and add performance gains. The net result was a better product and improved service for the customer. Gains Delivered by CloudVelocity What Samir required from CloudVelocity was exact cloning and the ability to move applications without change. It was a luxury to not have to re-build the applications and be able to spend more time making improvements that customers desire, said Samir. Our customers required a seamless application transfer, with no downtime. This requirement could not have been met without the help of the CloudVelocity One Hybrid Cloud platform. Samir credits CloudVelocity for enabling a 75% reduction in total cost planned for the project. I found that the cost savings of moving from a co-location data center and physical servers to a cloud based delivery model was signicant when I took into account the total cost of managing

Our customers required a seamless application transfer, with no downtime. This requirement could not have been met without the help of the CloudVelocity cloud migration platform. QL2 Software

server hardware. Keep in mind servers have a shelf life and are a major capital expense every 2-3 years. It was a major cost saving for QL2 to remove this major expense liability. I am excited about what I can do in the cloud for my customers. I believe that with the help of CloudVelocity, I am giving my customers more features and better performance. This will lead to increased customer satisfaction and increased company revenue, said Samir.

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CloudVelocity Software, 2350 Mission College Blvd., Ste. 1250, Santa Clara, CA 95054 408.841.4800 www.cloudvelocity.com
Copyright 2013 CloudVelocity Inc. All rights reserved.

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