Case Study: ATSG

Platform

AWS

ATSG Corporation leads the small business sector providing information technology solutions and professional services to commercial customers and United States Federal Agencies. As an AWS customer, ATSG was confronted with the challenge of 24/7 monitoring for one of its global applications.

Challenge

With several development projects on its plate, limited resources, and tight timeframes for delivery, ATSG chose Amazon Web Services as its cloud platform. ATSG liked the sheer functionality, scalability, self-service aspects, and competitive price of AWS. One development project, however, had global support implications which presented a challenge for ATSG. This system would be spread across different parts of the world so users required a 24/7 experience.

Given ATSG did not wish to address 24/7 monitoring capabilities internally, they decided to outsource this function to a company with expertise in managing AWS environments. According to Patrick McCollum, ATSG Chief Technical Officer, “Outsourcing managed AWS as a service for this project is a compelling option that allows me to spend our money on developers, not system administrators and network engineers.” Since ATSG has to manage multiple development companies, it made good sense for them to seek an outsourced solution for continuous monitoring of its global AWS system.

Solution

In its search for a managed AWS vendor, ATSG had several criteria for guiding its decision:

• Requisite managed AWS expertise and 24/7 monitoring capabilities

• A high level of responsiveness

• US-based

• Price competitive

In addition to Connectria, ATSG evaluated five other companies, each an AWS reseller with varying degrees of management and support capabilities. ATSG chose Connectria because it met all its criteria and demonstrated exceptional responsiveness, before, during, and after the sale. McCollum noted, “Given our tight schedules and the fact that we’re managing several development companies, Connectria’s responsiveness was key. We cannot have developers waiting around for changes.” McCollum added, “Some of the vendors we reviewed had the experience and monitoring capabilities, however, their use of overseas call centers and service providers created a responsiveness issue. It was clear to ATSG that Connectria was the best vendor for our needs. Connectria is undeniably one of the leaders within the Managed AWS market…not many vendors can do what they do.”

Results

With Connectria, ATSG is using Amazon S2, S3, RES, and SES product. Though the initial stage of the project is limited to 100 users, it has the potential to expand into the thousands, particularly if ATSG blends another one of its products on the same servers. As ATSG moves into production, they expect the complexity to increase and look forward to leveraging Connectria’s advanced AWS capabilities.