Scenario
In order to efficiently support their global ecosystem of network brokers and stakeholders, Steadfast had been leveraging Microsoft Azure but identified the need to further enhance their Azure cloud capabilities.
Providing brokerages with the tools to run their business was proving to be a resource intensive process for Steadfast and they needed a repeatable, scalable deployment solution to meet the demands of their ever-growing customer base.
Further, with an upcoming change in billing, requiring a time-sensitive migration, Steadfast decided to take the opportunity to begin planning how to best optimise their Azure investment.
When planning, Steadfast began by catering for four key requirements.
- Changes in Azure billing, with a move from CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) to EA (Enterprise Agreement) pricing
- Consolidation effort, ensuring the best operating model for over 110 Azure subscriptions
- Enhanced usage of DevOps tools and technologies, enabling the technology teams to focus on customer outcomes faster.
- Ongoing development of Steadfast’s Azure knowledge and capability, ensuring that operational gaps were addressed and aligned to a cloud modernisation roadmap
Solution
Steadfast chose Arinco, a trusted partner of Microsoft, to develop and iterate their Azure modernisation roadmap.
Initially, Arinco conducted a series of workshops aimed at identifying the various Azure deployments and migration options. The output of these workshops demonstrated several scenarios, each delivering different results based on time, cost, and level of rework. Services were mapped clearly into multiple buckets, ensuring that Steadfast’s migration and modernisation plan was categorised by business impact.
Following discovery, Arinco worked with Steadfast to design the enterprise scale framework and landing zones, addressing each of the buckets presented during the discovery phase. With a clear roadmap and design in place, Arinco’s “Azure Done Right” accelerator was utilised and moulded to accommodate Steadfast’s unique requirements.
Azure Bicep was also introduced to minimise the barriers for deployment, enabling teams to innovate using repeatable, secure, and fast deployment pipelines.
Steadfast’s customised Azure Done Right solution included:
- A consistent environment design, ensuring alignment from development to production
- Landing Zone templates with easily configurable components to accommodate different deployment patterns
- Management groups to keep control of various Landing Zones using policy as code
Outcome
In an accelerated timespan, Arinco’s solution provided the following major benefits which improved Steadfast’s overall footprint in Azure:
- A clearly defined Azure roadmap, with a prioritised backlog of work to continue innovating using the cloud
- A fully automated process facilitating the immediate move from CSP to EA, including considerations for multiple design patterns and Azure configurations
- No disruptions to the broker network during the migration of workloads
- Standardised, template driven Landing Zones that allowed for accelerated provisioning and consistent customer environments
- Shared and secure networking environment protected by Azure Firewall
- A redesigned Azure framework utilising a hub and spoke model with separated resources aligned with organisational teams
- Centralised visibility, with Azure Monitor enabling visibility into the Steadfast platform metrics
- A shift away from Click-Ops and a low entry point for Azure DevOps and Infrastructure as Code, utilising Bicep language
- Policies deployed to enforce tagging for improving billing, cost visibility as well as governance and compliance
Arinco’s approach ensured that Steadfast could develop a detailed understanding of Azure, building long term engineering capability into their organisation.
The overall success of the engagement has been a testament to the shared values and trusted partner approach. Arinco looks forward to working alongside Steadfast to further develop the overall vision for the organisation.
“With several cloud transformation projects in the pipeline, we engaged Arinco to provide the necessary support and expertise to ensure the project’s successful completion. Arinco were excellent. From their immediate understanding of the issues we were presented with, their recommended solutions, and flexibility with our evolving requirements, they never skipped a beat. Steve was extremely knowledgeable, flexible, and effective, and acted as an extension of our team which helped in upskilling our internal resources. It has been invaluable having a partner such as Arinco to bring in their expertise on projects when needed.”
