Author: Wolk

About NCS/DSDAssist

“Numeric Computer Systems (NCS), has focused on the needs of Fast-Moving Consumer Goods companies for over 40 years. Over that time, we have stayed abreast of revolutionary changes in the industry, today offering the eighth generation of our solutions. In 2016, we launched the DSD Assist cloud based solution portfolio.  The DSD Assist portfolio includes a new portal application, DSD Connect, plus online-offline mobile solutions for Sales Reps, Van Sales, Delivery drivers and Merchandisers.  Added to this is a mobile-first web ordering solution”

Drivers to the Cloud

The biggest influence in the creation of the DSD Assist products and for NCS to move to a cloud-based platform was to increase reliability and availability for customers. Scalability was also a large component to allow the suite of applications to respond rapidly to increasing customer demand, primarily within the Asia Pacific market.

The anticipation of the needs of its growing customer base was also one of the reasons that drove the company to move into the cloud. A massive feature and benefit of this move as well as moving to a more modern mobile suite of applications was the decrease in onsite consultancy, and ease of use for the customer.

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Moving to AWS was a natural progression for a company with such large and global growth, such as NCS, the scalability and availability allow them to readily increase and decrease the costs and performance as the customer needs changed and grew.

The move to SaaS model allowed NCS to increase its customer base rapidly, especially due to the scalability and reliability offered. “I cannot express how happy we have been with the process of moving to AWS, and the increase of reliability and scalability.” -Greg Mellis

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 servers as well as the reduction of superfluous resources are instantly attainable. Given NCS’ growing client base, the organization uses an expansive number of AWS Products and Services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon FSx, Application Load Balancer, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Workspaces, Route 53, CloudFormation, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Amazon SES, Secrets manager and more.

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

This process has reduced the expenses on hardware – the company could cut down the expenditure in the installation, configuration, and maintenance of on-premise servers including power costs, physical security concerns and cooling.

AWS security and compliance is a mutual responsibility model; the double layered protection – the first layer of AWS security and the second layer of security architecture customized depending on the business requirements. NCS has benefitted from the extra security offered by AWS by opening only port 443 and further securing their client portal by using CloudFront. NCS can further protect themselves by only making their client portal available to certain geographic locations.

Prior to working with WOLK, NCS was partnered with two separate AWS Partners, they did not find a suitable fit with them either the partner was focussed on larger clients or on a more Linux focused set of services.

WOLK Technology had synergy and was recommended via AWS itself, moving forward together and investigating new technologies, including FSx.

The greatest benefit for NCS in regard to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server was ensuring logs and changing data was placed into FSx allowing multiple servers and services access to the data, reducing downtime for databases to allow for maintenance of servers.

Why Amazon FSx for Windows File Server?

A pivotal component or service of the continually evolving DSD Assist Portfolio is Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.

At the infrastructure level the addition of a resilient, redundant service for the storage of data, transactions, logs etc. increases the resiliency of the application, removing multiple data drives that were all single points of failure. What is at first glance a more expensive solution quickly becomes cost effective if you consider the removal of each disks overhead, the backing up of each disk, and the potential for multiple copies of the same data. Add data deduplication, full compatibility with Windows Server, different storage tiers the cost effectiveness is no longer the question.

At the application level using a shared storage solution reduces transfer of data between components, meaning a write once read many solution to ‘none database data’ reducing batch times and reducing demand on the application servers. With all data being written off host recovery times and recovery points reduce which aligns with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Looking Forward

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

NCS look towards utilising FSx in more ways, as well as utilising the entire AWS Storage infrastructure, for example storing data in S3 as opposed to database storage. They are also looking into modifying some of their batch processing, investigating other options such as Lambda.

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 The LOTE Agency to move to a cloud-based platform was when their on-premises hardware was nearing end of life and an unexpected hardware failure nudged them towards a new solution. “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-site 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 into the cloud.

According to Peta, AWS was chosen as the PaaS for The LOTE Agency, as for the reasons; convenience and agility with the rapid increase of the global customer base. Through this experience, The LOTE Agency built up a profound dimension of aptitude in security, systems administration, while removing the burden associated with on-premise environments.

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. Have the data securely in an encrypted and secure cloud system removed the burden of 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 choose – using services like Deep Glacier it makes sense to keep backups for longer than ever before.

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The LOTE Agency has been considering moving on to AWS even before the server failure took place as they have been realizing the challenges and potential pitfalls that are inherent with on-site servers and all the software running on that sever requiring the staff to be located in the same physical location. AWS provides the facility to migrate from a normal workstation to a graphical workstation in a matter of seconds and this has been benefiting their advertising market in an efficient way. In addition, AWS supports multiple technology stacks making it easier to manage the business on the public cloud based platform.

One of the other primary concerns for The LOTE Agency when contemplating the move to the cloud was the security. Data security being one of the main pillars of the AWS business model, it is virtually guaranteed that the data is stored more securely in the cloud 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.

Given The LOTE Agency’s growing client base, the organization uses an expansive number of AWS Products and Services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Workspaces, Route 53, CloudFormation, CloudTrail, CloudFront, CloudWatch, Amazon SES, Secrets manager and more.

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

Moving on to AWS has given The LOTE Agency 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 in to 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 at a minimal cost. Apart from that, this process has reduced the expenses on hardware – the company could cut down the expenditure in the installation, configuration, and maintenance of on-premise servers including power costs, physical security concerns and cooling.

AWS security and compliance is a mutual responsibility model; the double layered protection – the first layer of AWS security and the second layer of security architecture customized depending on the business requirements. The LOTE Agency has benefited from the extra security offered by AWS by opening only port 443 and further securing their client portal by using CloudFront. The LOTE Agency can further protect themselves by only making their client portal available to certain geographic locations.

The LOTE Agency has also promoted the fast-paced working environment, reduced downtime, higher productivity and ensured customer satisfaction which eventually leads to higher revenue.

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 The LOTE Agency environment and when the tender ends, they no longer pay for those resources. A whole new way of working has opened up to The LOTE Agency, with the ability to engage staff or contractors from anywhere and at a moment’s notice. There are several AWS services that The LOTE Agency has not explored yet that may be of interest in the future to help automate and streamline the business, these include Elastic Transcoder, Kinesis Video Streams, Media Convert to name a few.