Overview
The Arinco Co–Ops Managed Services team collaborated with ForHealth Group to achieve a 30% reduction in Azure costs, improve resource management and modernise infrastructure by migrating from third-party products to Azure native tools. Through proactive monitoring and governance, Arinco ensured zero major incidents or outages across ForHealth’s Azure environment, creating a robust, cost-efficient, and scalable environment for the healthcare provider.
Customer context
ForHealth Group is one of Australia’s leading providers of healthcare services, supporting over 1,000 independent medical and dental professionals across the country. With a focus on delivering high-quality healthcare to Australians, ForHealth serves more than 7 million patient visits annually at its 70+ medical and dental centres. As a result, ForHealth plays a crucial role in improving the health outcomes of their patients through accessible and reliable healthcare services.
Challenge
In November 2023, ForHealth engaged the Arinco Co-Ops Managed Services team to support and optimise their Azure environment, aiming to reduce costs, enhance resource management and modernise their infrastructure.
ForHealth chose to utilise the below Arinco Co-Ops modules:
- The Managed Services Module: A proactive modern managed service, backed by SLAs to maintain, monitor, enhance and support the ForHealth Azure environment.
- The Flexible Monthly Retainer Module: To provide ForHealth with the agility and flexibility to scale up and down to rapidly deliver improvement projects within the same Arinco Managed Services team.
ForHealth also sought to modernise their infrastructure and reduce licensing costs by migrating from third-party products to Azure-native solutions. This would help streamline their operations, reduce reliance on external vendors and provide more control over their cloud environment.
Arinco Co-Ops recognised these challenges and saw an opportunity to implement cost-saving measures, optimise resources and help ForHealth modernise their infrastructure for a more scalable, efficient solution.
Our Approach
- Document the goals. ForHealth’s key goal was to reduce ongoing Azure costs by 25% by mid-2024. Plans developed by Arinco were aligned with achieving this goal within the timeframe.
- Collaborate. Arinco Co-Ops worked closely with ForHealth stakeholders to optimise their Azure environment, focusing on cost reduction, improved resource management and infrastructure modernisation.
- Implement. Arinco implemented the below solutions to address ForHealth’s requirements.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC):
Arinco implemented IaC for virtual machines using Bicep in Azure DevOps, ensuring greater scalability, consistency and control within ForHealth’s environment. This approach also simplified deployment processes and improved the overall agility of their infrastructure.
Monitoring and Alerting
To ensure Arinco has visibility of availability and can respond quickly to events and alerts, Arinco implemented Azure Monitor on the ForHealth Azure platform. This also meant that there was no need for 3rd party products and associated licensing costs.
Automated Operating System Patching
To maintain a secure environment, reduce third-party licensing costs, and limit ongoing human effort, Arinco implemented pre-scheduled, fully automated operating system patching using Azure Update Manager.
Migration to Native Azure Tools:
Arinco facilitated ForHealth ’s transition from other third-party products to Azure-native solutions. This migration streamlined operations, reduced external vendor dependencies and licencing costs and provided ForHealth with better control over their cloud infrastructure.
Cost Optimisation:
Decommission and right size: Arinco proactively engaged with stakeholders to decommission unnecessary resources and right-size virtual machines. Arinco utilised Azure Advisor for initial insights, then performed detailed analysis to identify underutilised resources and propose cost saving solutions to ForHealth.
Reserved Instances Management:
To take advantage of associated cost savings, Arinco implemented reservations for a significant number of Virtual Machines where it made sense for ForHealth. Through careful analysis, Arinco also identified and remediated unused Reserved Instances in the Azure environment. Arinco continues to review reservations for ForHealth under its Managed Service offering.
Outcomes
The partnership between ForHealth and Arinco Co-Ops resulted in several key outcomes:
- Cost Reduction: ForHealth exceeded their cost-saving goal, achieving a 30% reduction in monthly Azure spend, surpassing the target of 25% by mid-2024. This not only provided immediate cost relief but also set the stage for long-term financial efficiency.
- Improved Operational Efficiency: By eliminating unused VMs and replacing third-party tools with Azure-native solutions, ForHealth simplified their infrastructure. This reduced complexity, making it easier to manage and support moving forward.
- Proactive Management: Working closely with ForHealth, Arinco proactively managed their environment, focusing on continuous cost optimisation, efficient resource allocation and supporting key architectural decisions that would impact their long-term cloud strategy. This approach ensured that ForHealth’s infrastructure remained agile and cost-effective.
- Zero major incidents or outages: Arinco’s proactive monitoring and governance enabled the identification and resolution of potential issues before they could disrupt operations. As a result, ForHealth experienced zero major incidents or outages, ensuring uninterrupted service delivery and operational reliability.
On-going support
Having achieved the primary cost-saving goals, Arinco continues to provide Managed Services and enhancements to ForHealth driving further improvements to ForHealth’s Secure Score, overall system reliability, and ongoing infrastructure modernisation initiatives.