Clever Contacts

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Overview

Prior to their collaboration with Lynkz, Clever Contacts was grappling with aging hardware and disparate operating systems, leading to security, reliability, disaster recovery, performance, management overhead, and financial concerns. Additionally, their critical infrastructure was heavily reliant on single physical or aged Hyper-V servers, causing maintenance and troubleshooting difficulties due to a lack of redundancy and extended recovery timeframes. In response to these challenges, Lynkz executed a comprehensive consolidation, migrating Clever Contacts services to a new VMware platform using advanced tools from various vendors, resulting in a performance-enhanced and disaster-resilient solution.

As a result of this transformation, Clever Contacts experienced a remarkable increase in system performance, reduced management overhead, and lowered operational costs. Moreover, the implementation of Veeam Backup and Recovery further decreased their Recovery Time Objective (RTO) from hours to mere minutes, ensuring minimal revenue loss and facilitating seamless testing and enhancement processes. This case study showcases the value of strategic infrastructure modernisation in fostering business growth and efficiency for Clever Contacts.

Challenge

Clever Contacts faced severe service reliability and security concerns due to their aging and disparate infrastructure. Physical servers caused increased downtime and management overhead, while outdated software and firewalls raised security issues. The lack of an adequate disaster recovery solution led to extended outages. They urgently needed a comprehensive solution for enhanced performance and security.

Solution

We addressed Clever Contacts severe service reliability and security concerns through a comprehensive solution. Our team performed Virtual to Virtual (V2V) and Physical to Virtual (P2V) migrations, utilising VMware, SolarWinds, Microsoft, and other tools to convert all core servers to the new VMware platform, which included Windows and Linux server versions. Additionally, we deployed Veeam Backup and Recovery, with Azure Blob Storage for offsite recovery, enabling direct connectivity to the VMware environment for streamlined whole virtual machine restoration.

To bolster security, we reconfigured Fortigate appliances to harden the external perimeter of the on-premises network. Moreover, we consolidated approximately 26 servers and services into 8, optimising management and licensing. This process also allowed us to conduct significant Operating System, Software, and Patch maintenance, significantly elevating the level of security across the infrastructure. The combined efforts of infrastructure migration, enhanced security measures, and streamlined management have successfully resolved the service reliability and security concerns faced by Clever Contacts, providing them with a robust and efficient IT environment.

Results

Through our efforts to enhance Clever Contacts’ infrastructure, significant improvements have been achieved. The implementation of our solution resulted in increased server and service performance, leading to reduced outage windows and improved system reliability. With the ability to recover swiftly from server and service failures, operational downtime has been substantially minimised, resulting in cost savings. Moreover, our security enhancements have effectively reduced their exposure to potential threats, safeguarding their critical data and operations. The overall IT operational time and cost have been significantly reduced, allowing Clever Contacts to focus resources on strategic initiatives. Furthermore, the streamlined environment management, support, and sustainability have provided a robust platform for Development and Testing, empowering their teams to innovate and deploy new solutions more efficiently.

Find out more about system upgrades that can assist your business @lynkz.com.au