More and more businesses are using the flexible, scalable, and secure infrastructure of Amazon Web Services to run their Microsoft Windows workloads. These case studies exemplify how customers have achieved business agility, cost savings, innovation, and high availability with the AWS Cloud. Many customers rely on the expertise of the AWS Partner Network (APN) to help with their solution.
By running on AWS, Dole Foods can now launch a new Microsoft SharePoint website in minutes. Their migration to the AWS Cloud saved approximately $350,000 in operating expenses. Dole worked with APN Premier Consulting Partner Smartronix to help architect their solution.
Expedia is committed to continuous innovation, with technology and platform improvements to create a great user experience. The company chose AWS because it was the only solution with the global infrastructure in place to support its customers. Expedia uses a blue-green approach to create parallel production environments, enabling continuous deployment and faster time-to-market. "When I think of AWS, freedom is the first word that comes to mind," says Magesh Chandramouli, Principal Architect.
As a large enterprise, Unilever needed a cloud hosting provider with the global infrastructure to support hundreds of web properties around the world. In addition to realizing the benefits of improved business agility and operational efficiency, Unilever sees a competitive advantage from being on AWS. "We can focus on innovation rather than infrastructure", says Sreenivas Yalamanchili, Digital Marketing Services Global Technical Manager. Uniliver worked with APN Advanced Consulting Partner CSS Corp to help with their solution.
Hess Corporation is a leading global independent energy company engaged in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. In order to divest some of its business, the company used Microsoft SQL Server on AWS to separate the business systems and data for potential buyers. Hess worked with APN Advanced Consulting Partner Equinix to help migrate their infrastructure to AWS.
Infor keeps pace with global business growth while saving time and money by going all in on AWS. The company runs more than 30 customer-facing applications on the AWS Cloud, to provide enterprise resource planning and other software solutions to a range of enterprises worldwide. Infor uses Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 I2 instances, and has about two petabytes of application data to back up every day. By using Amazon Elastic Block Store volume types optimized for throughput, Infor can now complete these backups 30 percent more quickly, at a 75 percent cost savings.
Kaplan is a global provider of educational services for individuals, schools, and businesses. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the company migrated its Kaplan Test Prep division to the AWS Cloud, including datacenter hosting applications and databases, which were moved to Amazon RDS for SQL Server. As a result, Kaplan has reduced its datacenter footprint and improved user experience by leveraging multiple AWS regions to deliver content faster to its customers around the world.
Macmillan can scale its flagship digital learning application LaunchPad to support three times the number of users, while releasing new application features faster using AWS. The organization provides print and digital learning tools to educators for tailored solutions to spark student engagement and measure progress. Macmillan worked with AWS Partner Relus Cloud to migrate LaunchPad to the AWS Cloud, using a combination of servcies including Amazon EC2 for Windows and Linux, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, CloudFront, and Direct Connect.
Newforma® scales its .NET-based project information management (PIM) solution to meet global growth, deploys software updates in weeks instead of months, and ensures strong security and high availability by using AWS. The company offers PIM solutions to architecture, engineering, and construction customers throughout the world. Newforma®runs its cloud-hosted products and features on the AWS Cloud, using many products including AWS OpsWorks Stacks, Amazon EC2, AWS CloudFormation, AWS IAM, and AWS Lambda.
Deltek saves a significant amount annually in Microsoft licensing costs, scales quickly to support fast business growth, and stays compliant with regulatory requirements by using AWS. The company offers business software solutions to 22,000 project-based businesses worldwide. Deltek runs its customer-facing SaaS business in production on the AWS Cloud and takes advantage of Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances and Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts to reduce costs and stay in license compliance with Microsoft.
At LIONSGATE, many business processes require collaboration across teams, departments, and geographies. The company has included Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and AWS in its IT strategy since 2010. To reduce the time spent managing the solution, LIONSGATE engaged Datapipe, a member of the AWS Partner Network, for monitoring and administration tasks. "Amazon Virtual Private Cloud gives us a secure environment in the AWS Cloud with the flexibility and scalability we need to manage our SharePoint environment with zero impact to our on-premises datacenter,” says Jeremy Fuchs, Vice President of Financial and BI Systems at LIONSGATE.
The Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) owns sports and entertainment facilities across the globe and needed a centralized site to enable staffers to find the information they needed quickly, without having to visit multiple different internal sites. The company reached out to the AWS Partner Network (APN) to implement Microsoft SharePoint on AWS. “Amazon Web Services offered the scalability and flexible capacity that AEG needed,” says Denise Taylor, AEG CIO.
Ricoh was using a hosted SharePoint solution to enable its global sales team and professional technical support team to share information in many different projects. By migrating to AWS, the company was able to cut operating costs to approximately one-third of the old system. In addition to SharePoint, the solution includes ActiveDirectory, RDP, WSUS, and OWA, as well as DocAve SharePoint management software from APN Technology Partner AvePoint.
Delaware North manages and provides food and beverage concessions, premium dining, entertainment, lodging, and retail at many large venues around the world, such as sports stadiums, entertainment complexes, national and state parks, airports, and casinos, serving more than 500 million customers at 200 venues each year. By moving most of its corporate datacenter operations to AWS, the company was able to reduce its server footprint by 91 percent and save at least $3.5 million over five years, while improving security compliance and disaster recovery. Delaware North runs Microsoft Windows Server, SQL Server, and System Center Configuration Manager on AWS, among many other services.
Jobvite provides recruiting solutions to more than 1,600 customers, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Etsy, SpaceX, and Farmers Insurance. The company's customers depend on it to be fast and reliable, which became challenging with their prior solution. After moving to AWS for dev/test, staging, and production, server provisioning time went from weeks to minutes and uptime is now above 99.98 percent, while cutting costs by 35 percent. Jobvite is using dozens of AWS services, such as EC2, S3, ELB, WorkSpaces, and multiple versions of RDS, including SQL Server. By leveraging AWS, the company is able to achieve the scalability to expand to new markets and business segments.
Interflora Spain is a business unit of Fleurop-Interflor, the Swiss-based company that operates a floral delivery network doing business in 150 countries. Interflora Spain uses AWS to run its customer-facing e-commerce platform and backend systems, including its Microsoft Dynamics ERP system and big data, business intelligence, and data backup projects. By using AWS, the company can handle seasonal spikes in orders, can quickly and easily update its e-commerce platform, and has made internal business processes more efficient.
The oil and gas industry is cyclical. The ability to respond quickly to new opportunities when demand is great and to scale down when it fades is paramount to the success of the business. The physical server infrastructure Willbros had in place was hampering its marketplace agility. By using AWS, Willbros is able to respond swiftly to marketplace conditions, prototype and complete projects quickly, and focus on business value instead of IT costs. In addition to providing agility, Willbros points to security certifications and the continual innovation as factors in choosing AWS.
Choice Logistics provides time-critical delivery services to businesses and an available and efficient messaging environment is vital. Working with Smartronix, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Choice Logistics transitioned its Exchange Server from version 2007 to 2010 on the AWS Cloud. "By using AWS, we can resize mailbox servers based on demand for compute or storage, and change compute characteristics in a matter of minutes," says Tom Bentzen, Director of Information Systems at Choice.
InfoSpace, a global provider of metasearch and monetization solutions, was using colocation facilities in Washington and Virginia to manage its infrastructure. The organization was evaluating a refresh of server and network equipment and the cost of remaining with these datacenters was not viable. After considering several cloud service providers, InfoSpace chose AWS because of the maturity of the platform and availability of APIs and tools that leverage the .NET framework.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade association for the world’s airlines, representing 250 companies, which account for 84 percent of global air traffic. When the organization needed to boost the performance of its BI platform, it looked to AWS because of its pace of innovation, big data services portfolio, and security features – especially the ISO 27001 certification which IATA required for its highly confidential information. IATA is running Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint on AWS, in a hybrid solution integrated with its on premises Active Directory.
ConnectWise had log-processing infrastructure which was unable to handle traffic spikes that would get as high as six million requests per hour, causing dropped logs and dashboard service failure, leading to bad customer experience. The company needed a new solution that could integrate with Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Kinesis. Using AWS Lambda to process logs within milliseconds of arrival in S3 and update DynamoDB tables, ConnectWise was able to improve operations and the customer experience.
One of Australia's largest diversified property groups, The GPT Group wanted to lower costs and extract more value from its IT department. Nearly its entire datacenter was moved to the cloud, including SharePoint, SQL Server and Active Directory. GPT estimates a wide range of beneits including lower costs, better security, consistent performance and ability to respond more quickly to growth opportunities.
When Slalom Consulting decided to upgrade to SharePoint 2013, the company needed a cloud provider who could support multiple, persistent site-to-site connections. By using AWS, Slalom was able to upgrade to SharePoint 2013 and use Direct Connect to enable connections to its existing cloud and on-premises data centers. Running on the AWS Cloud helps Slalom take advantage of new SharePoint features while saving an average of 14 percent compared to its previous cloud provider. Slalom is an APN Premier Consulting Partner.
Consumer financial planning company rplan needed a cloud solution with enterprise-level security, availability, scalability, performance, and management capabilities. "By using AWS, our team can focus on pushing our products forward, not on fighting infrastructure,” says company CTO Gavin Baird. The company can now take on new clients at a speed that would otherwise have been impossible, with time to create new client environments having been reduced from one day to one hour.
Goodman Group is a leading international industrial property group based in Sydney, Australia. Working the APN, the company used Microsoft SharePoint 2013 on the AWS Cloud to deploy a content and collaboration platform. As a result, Goodman Group reduced full search and indexing for SharePoint by 90 percent — from 60 hours to six — and avoided $400,000 in capital expenditures.
Kim Teck Cheong (KTC) is one of the largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) businesses in East Malaysia, and a wholesale distributor for companies such as Proctor & Gamble, GSK, Danone, and Coca-Cola. The company was working on an expansion to other countries in the Southeast Asian region, and decided to move to a cloud solution that could scale to support ongoing growth and host mission critical business applications in production, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SAP Business One. KTC worked with APN Consulting Partner G–Asiapacific for its migration to AWS.
In spring 2010, Suunto launched Movescount.com, a unique platform that allows sports and fitness enthusiasts to easily "manage their moves" by uploading, rating, tracking, and engaging with other likeminded members. Movescount.com has incorporated AWS into its architecture for development, testing, and production since its inception. Programming languages and tools provided in the Amazon Software Development Kits (SDKs), as well as support for Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server were cited as factors in deciding to go with AWS.
During a period of rapid expansion, Ziff Davis, Inc. acquired several new properties and ended up with a patchwork infrastructure spread over numerous co-location facilities. Managing licenses, logins, and contracts for multiple environments became a costly and time-consuming process. Microsoft SQL Server running on AWS allowed Ziff Davis to programmatically optimize applications and data aggregation and storage, creating a cohesive infrastructure across its portfolio.
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