Author: WOLK

About Deaf Services(DS)

Deaf Services (DS) is the prominent service provider for the Deaf and hard of hearing community with a focus on community and empowerment. Deaf Services are a not-for-profit organisation working with the community to enhance services and programs that benefit Deaf and hard of hearing adults and children across Australia. Deaf Services provide a broad range of services including ageing support, lifestyle support, community integration, child education, interpreting and sign language education.

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Deaf Services host several workloads on AWS and when it came time to implement an EUC (End User Compute) environment it made sense to build that on AWS. Deaf Services implemented an EUC solution using Amazon Workspaces for roughly 180 members of staff to be able to work remotely. The solution was rapidly implemented and for the most part was working really well.

Overview of the challenge

There were a few challenges that lead to DS working with WOLK Technology on a AWS Well Architected Review. For DS the main challenges were a lack of visibility of the state of the Workspaces, users complaining of slow login times and a blown out budget.

What is AWS Well Architected

AWS Well-Architected helps cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications and workloads. Based on five pillars — operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization — AWS Well-Architected provides a consistent approach for customers and partners to evaluate architectures, and implement designs that can scale over time.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework describes the key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for designing and running workloads in the cloud. By answering a set of foundational questions, you learn how well your architecture aligns with cloud best practices and are provided guidance for making improvements.

The Benefits of Working with AWS and WOLK Technology – an AWS Advanced consulting partner and “Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows” Solution Provider

WOLK worked with DS on a Well Architected Review with a particular focus on the Cost pillar. Through account visualisation and the Well Architected Review process we analysed the environment, customer needs and costs. We noticed that most staff worked more than 2 hours per day on average and some staff complained of connectivity issues in the mornings.

WOLK changed the running mode of the Workspaces fleet from “Auto-Stop” to “Always On” which gives DS a fixed monthly cost which helps with cost planning and analysis. “Auto-Stop” is great for users who work only a few hours at a time, giving a small monthly cost with a small hourly charge. If the service is used more regularly the hourly costs aggregate and eventually cost more than an “Always On” solution would, with fixed monthly costs.

WOLK then implemented a daily restart of the Workspaces instances, greatly reducing the number of issues the users were experiencing upon login. Combining the “Always On” option with a daily restart meant that the users had a much quicker login experience than before, saving an estimated 3 to 4 minutes per user per day. With 180+ users that very quickly adds up to a lot of wasted time waiting.

Moving DS from “Auto-Stop” to “Always On” and implementing the changes listed above saved DS roughly $4 000 per month in direct AWS usage costs and a further conservative estimate of $9000 in lost productivity savings.

WOLK implemented a 3rd party monitoring solution for the Deaf Services internal IT helpdesk to monitor the health of the EUC fleet, giving the IT helpdesk the power to rapidly see and fix issues before being contacted by end users.

WOLK also supplied DS with a dashboard which shows their compliance with the Well Architected standards from an account level while giving a daily snapshot of predicted vs actual vs budget cost.

Using Amazon Workspaces has been a great benefit for DS staff working from home during the Covid pandemic. Going forward DS believes that productivity will be maintained as they transition back into a more traditional / hybrid workplace as they know that the majority of staff will never return to the office.

So what did WOLK do for DS?

DS already had an AWS account with a production workload. Due to urgent work from home demands DS had created ~180 Workspaces to enable their users to continue functioning. For the most part this was a easy and smooth project and it was deemed a success.

The DS servicedesk were getting a fair amount of tickets and user complaints due to slows and unresponsive Workspaces instances. DS contacted WOLK to help, we recommended that we conduct a Well Architected Review.

WOLK found that the majority of issues came from users trying to log on in the morning, then having issues and slows due to Workspaces and applications resuming. WOLK implemented several changes to the Workspaces workload, first was to change all users from auto-stop to always on. This reduced the wait time in the mornings where users had to wait for their Workspaces instance to come alive. We also introduced a daily restart of the Workspaces instances which took care of slows caused by users never restarting their instances.

Lastly, WOLK gave DS a monitoring solution that checks the health of the individual Workspaces and displays it on a custom dashboard that the support staff can display in the office or in a browser. The result being that the servicedesk could resolve issues on unresponsive Workspaces before the users report them. Combining the time saved when logging on with the time saved by multiple users having non-responsive Workspaces each morning is where the productivity savings are realized.

Technologies used within this environment include but are not limited to:

– Organizations
– Cloudformation
– EC2
– Config
– GuardDuty
– KMS
– Secrets Manager
– Systems Manager
– Workspaces
– FSx
– Lambda
– Route 53
– Cloudfront
– S3
– SES
– SNS
– Cloudtrail
– Cloudwatch
– Backup
– Direct Connect

About The LOTE Agency

The LOTE Agency is a multicultural marketing agency that serves advertising needs for multicultural companies in helping them to deliver their message, product or brand to multicultural audiences. The LOTE Agency not only uses the best professional level translators available to translate the message and produce multilingual campaign materials, but also helps in effectively targeting a greater audience.

“While providing a range of advertising and marketing services like advertisements, brochures, corporate videos, research, planning and strategy to digital marketing production and delivery, The LOTE Agency serves the non-English Australian community including employers, advertising agencies and marketing professionals wishing to communicate with audiences from diverse cultural backgrounds.”

Drivers to the Cloud

The biggest influence for LOTE to move to a cloud-based platform was that their on-premises hardware was nearing end of life. An unexpected hardware failure nudged them towards a new solution slightly earlier than anticipated. “It was clear that we needed something more reliable than an on-site server”, spoke Peta Reynolds – Project Manager of The LOTE Agency about the disappointing experience caused by the server failure. The team have started realizing the significant limitations and challenges in cost, performance, and agility caused by the on-premise hosted server by the time this incident occurred.

The anticipation of the needs of its growing customer base was also one of the reasons that drove the company to move to the cloud.

Among many of the other drivers to the cloud, the security of data was a major concern with the rise of malicious attacks and crypto-style events. Having the data securely in an encrypted and secure cloud system removed the burden of further securing the physical office environment. The LOTE Agency now has all data encrypted at rest, all backups are encrypted and kept safe for as long as they require.

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)

LOTE has been considering moving to AWS even before the server failure took place as they have been realizing the challenges and potential pitfalls that are inherent with on-premise servers. Without a remote solution and all the software running on that sever required staff to be located in the same physical location. AWS provides the ability to migrate from a normal workstation to a graphics workstation in a matter of minutes. This has been of benefit to LOTE as their needs change.

One of the other primary concerns for LOTE when contemplating the move to the cloud was the security. Data security being one of the main pillars of the Well Architected Framework, it is guaranteed that the data is stored more securely in their AWS tenant than in an on-premises server.

With AWS, the company exploits a scalable, reliable, and secure worldwide computing infrastructure, the virtual backbone of Amazon.com’s multi-billion-dollar online business that has been sharpened for over a decade. On the other hand, they can also scale up or down the computing resources according to business demand and requirements. Deploying new Workspaces or servers as well as the reduction of superfluous resources are instantly attainable.

The Benefits of Working with AWS and WOLK Technology – an AWS Advanced consulting partner and “Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows” Solution Provider

Moving to AWS has given LOTE the ability to go global, as it doesn’t require a specific location for staff members, In fact, they can work from anywhere in the world by logging into their own Workspaces environment. This has given the benefits and the capability to work globally despite the difficulties with doing so. Ash, Client Services Manager at The LOTE Agency, especially finds it convenient and easy as he can access the platform from anywhere with lower latency than before and also enjoys a better user experience. Moving to Workspaces has reduced the expenses on hardware – the company could cut down the expenditure on installation, configuration, and maintenance of high end graphics workstations and the on-premise servers including power costs, physical security concerns and cooling.

Looking Forward

The LOTE Agency keeps on propelling themselves to new heights while working closely with WOLK Technology, the organization intends to incorporate more AWS services into the platform.

The LOTE Agency now also has the ability to properly budget for tenders that they choose to bid for, having a fixed cost per employee or contractor, safe in the knowledge that the customer data never leaves the LOTE environment and when the tender ends, they no longer pay for those resources. A whole new way of working has opened up to LOTE, with the ability to engage staff or contractors from anywhere and at a moment’s notice. Applying for tenders that have extraneous security requirements is now also a lot easier – when completing the tenders they can now tick every box when it comes to security – “where is the data”, “how is the data stored, is it encrypted” or “who has access to the data” etc. Moving to AWS has given LOTE a solid security posture which really works in their favour when it comes to those security conscious customers.

So what did WOLK do for LOTE?

Due to hardware failure, WOLK lent LOTE some hardware thus time was a big factor in this migration so we fast-tracked the project and got all LOTE’s data synchronized and had the users working on AWS within a week. This was a pretty standard migration project for WOLK and fits our normal mold for Modern End User Compute.

WOLK conducted a Well Architected Review with LOTE. LOTE learned a lot about AWS and terms like RTO and RPO which was a fun process which added value to their business.

Moving to AWS and Workspaces has allowed LOTE predictable ongoing costs and an easy process for adding extra staff. Since moving to Workspaces LOTE has grown from an initial 4 users to over 25 users and still growing. These users are no longer restricted to a geographic location which means that there are far reaching implications for LOTE being able to employ people in the locations they physically need to work..

Technologies used within this environment include but are not limited to:

– Organizations
– Cloudformation
– EC2
– Config
– GuardDuty
– KMS
– Secrets Manager
– Systems Manager
– Workspaces
– Lambda
– S3
– SES
– SNS
– Cloudtrail
– Cloudwatch
– Backup

About Northwest Investments(NWI)

Northwest Investments Pty Ltd (NWI) owns and operates a number of Quick Service Restaurants throughout Australia. NWI have a head office located in Melbourne and run a Payroll system called Accrivia.

Drivers to the Cloud

NWI was running an old Microsoft Small Business Server in their head office location. The hardware was end of life and the operating system were no longer supported. Connectivity for remote staff was also an issue with store managers needing to log into the central system to submit data. Slows due to the NBN connection caused severe issues for remote staff trying to connect back to on-premise resources.

Accrivia (Payroll system) is a WOLK partner and always recommend AWS and WOLK as their preferred cloud offering. This is where NWI and WOLK started their journey to the cloud. NWI wanted a system that was up to date, easy to use and allowed their remote staff better access to their systems while also keeping user familiarity with the current systems as a priority to reduce user pushback.

“We needed to replace our aging hardware and considered several solutions and providers, the recommendation from Accrivia and the fact that WOLK supply services for a number of other similar franchisees made the decision easy” said Diana Earp, NWI.

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)

NWI needed to replace their old server infrastructure and decided that cloud was the answer. As always, using a proven system is the easiest route to guaranteed success and WOLK had proven that it can provide solutions to other Accrivia customers, hosted on AWS.

Being the world’s biggest and most reliable public cloud provider, moving to AWS gave NWI a lot of certainty that their data would be safe. There would not be capacity or speed issues and all staff would have the same experience when using shared company resources.

WOLK implemented a new firewall appliance with failover to 4g at the NWI head office, which meant that the normal blocker of “what if my internet goes down” was negated very easily.

The Benefits of Working with AWS and WOLK Technology – an AWS Advanced consulting partner and “Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows” Solution Provider

NWI had been working with another Managed Service Provider (MSP) for the on-premise server who made things a lot easier for WOLK to transition NWI to the cloud. Moving all of NWI’s IT resources to WOLK meant that WOLK turned into their single point of contact for all their IT needs.

There was no longer a need for a VPN or insecure RDP connections to an unsupported Remote Desktop server. WOLK initially implemented a modern and secure Microsoft Remote Desktop solution which meant that everyone had access to everything they needed to do their job and meant that the store managers could be more efficient all while keeping the way they worked very similar to before.

WOLK provided a very straightforward solution, which includes the EUC environment, File shares, Office applications, Payroll system and their Legacy apps. With a baseline cost, every additional user cost can be easily calculated to allow for planning.

Most of the office-based staff now work from home and only occasionally go into the office. This is only possible because staff can now work from home with the same efficiency as working from the office, even if using BYOD home grade equipment. The ease of switching from office based to remote working is one of the key advantages to having a cloud native end user compute solution.

So what did WOLK do for NWI?

Due to time constraints and the technology stack already in place, WOLK migrated NWI to AWS using a lift-and-shift method from the on-premise server to reduce pushback by users when completely changing the technology they used. We were told that staff were very resistant to change and they are used to the previous / old systems. We implemented a classic Microsoft Terminal Server environment and migrated all users to the new infrastructure over a 48 hour period.

NWI used this system for about 12 months, but a change in Microsoft licensing forced a rethink of the environment and NWI agreed to move to Workspaces.

WOLK conducted a Well Architected Review with NWI. The result being that every component is compliant with the new Microsoft licensing terms and the account is in the best state possible. Going through the process of a review with the client highlights the reasons behind some of the recommendations we were making and the client learnt a lot along the way. Engraining the Well Architected principles into everything we do adds real value to clients.

Technologies used within this environment include but are not limited to:

– Organizations
– Cloudformation
– EC2
– Config
– GuardDuty
– KMS
– Secrets Manager
– Systems Manager
– Workspaces
– FSx
– Lambda
– Route 53
– S3
– SES
– SNS
– Cloudtrail
– Cloudwatch
– Backup