Reducing the Cost & Risk of Migrating 2000 Servers

When Ensono, a leading managed services provider began a customer data center migration, it turned to ReadyWorks to automate data collection and analysis, increase margins, and accelerate time to revenue.

Ensono's client needed to transition an on-premise system of 2,500 servers to a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Unfortunately, like most companies, the client’s CMDB was highly inaccurate and didn’t include a lot of critical information needed to accurately scope and complete the migration. 

To remedy this manually was going to take a lot of time and effort. Application owners and server SMEs would need to be identified and more than 180 data points would need to be collected per application.  This would require numerous data discovery workshops, phone calls, and emails, with information recorded and analyzed on spreadsheets.  Workshops required 3 project team members plus 4 client personnel.

• Accelerate project timelines.
• Minimize migration risks and downtime.
• Reduce labor costs, improving MSP margins.
  

To bid competitively, maintain margins, and accelerate project timelines, the MSP needed an automated approach to managing this data center migration.  They needed a solution that would drastically reduce or eliminate costly and inefficient data discovery workshops.  The team turned to ReadyWorks, a digital platform conductor (DPC).

ReadyWorks was used to automatically collect data from all sources, including systems of record and client personnel.  ReadyWorks identified missing information and anomalies, cleaned, and normalized the data. Automated T-Comms were then sent to application and server owners with the request to verify or correct data and provide missing information via surveys in the ReadyWorks self-service portal. Automating the data chase:

• Saved the MSP over 4,100 hours.
• Reduced costs by $600,000.
• Accelerated the project by 7 months.  

The team is now looking at ReadyWorks to help complete the migration. In addition to automating data collection and analysis, ReadyWorks orchestrates and automates human and systems workflows and reports on program status. This will allow the MSP to increase resource capacity, pull revenue forward, and improve margins.