Private Cloud Automation Requirements & Design

ENGAGEMENT

The Cloud Engineering team of a Fortune 500 Communications & Media company, burdened by the high and continually rising costs of public cloud services, engaged DayBlink Consulting for support in developing an innovative solution to manage its infrastructure more efficiently. The company aimed to create a public-cloud-like experience that would provide the flexibility to automatically create, remove and shift workloads seamlessly across its hybrid environment, optimizing both performance and cost.

To achieve this vision, DayBlink Consulting collaborated with the Cloud Engineering team to gather detailed design requirements from diverse stakeholders across the organization. This ensured the solution addressed the varying needs of different business units. The effort focused on developing a user-friendly interface and robust APIs that integrated seamlessly with the company’s existing suite of VMware infrastructure, enhancing efficiency while ensuring system compatibility.

PROBLEM

Our client’s public cloud spend was growing at an alarming and unbounded rate. Its multi-cloud environment incurred significant costs driven by the complex billing structures of multiple cloud providers, numerous accounts within each organization, unpredictable usage patterns and a lack of optimized resource management across hundreds of applications. This lack of visibility and control made it difficult to predict and manage expenses, leading to increasing financial strain.

Despite our client’s substantial size and robust capabilities, the existing private cloud options were falling short in several critical areas. These systems lacked essential features for non-technical users, were several version releases behind and faced significant over-subscription issues. The private cloud’s inability to scale effectively resulted in performance bottlenecks, further exacerbating the challenges in managing their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

SOLUTION

To address these challenges, DayBlink Consulting led the effort to design a modern private cloud solution that combined the features, ease of use and efficiency of public cloud environments with the cost benefits of owning private infrastructure. In an essential partnership with a 3rd party technology provider, the client pioneered this first-of-its-kind private cloud solution. To ensure the vendor delivered an acceptable solution,  we defined detailed requirements through collaboration with numerous application teams and key stakeholders from the security, engineering and finance organizations.

With those inputs, we worked with the vendor to design a full-stack solution featuring a user-friendly interface, allowing dev and product teams to deploy and manage workloads easily (akin to the simplicity of public cloud platforms). We also designed infrastructure automation to orchestrate workload distribution across physical hardware to ensure the private cloud operated with the flexibility and convenience typically associated with public clouds. Finally, we collaborated with major infrastructure vendors to design supply-chain processes for future expansions. 

RESULT

Our client obtained a 50% reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over the next five years, due to improved cost management. This transition minimized reliance on external cloud providers, offering better visibility and control over their long-term expenses (and enabled more effective budgeting).

The new private cloud solution was modular and scalable, enabling teams to customize their resources to meet specific needs. This adaptability allowed for more efficient growth and faster response to changing requirements across departments and teams. Additionally, the optimized supply chain allowed for infrastructure expansion in under 45 days, faster than many private cloud solutions we’ve seen.

Beyond the technical benefits, the new cloud platform helped foster a “cloud culture,” with teams adopting cloud-first practices like using cloud-based collaboration tools and automating workflows, which improved efficiency and responsiveness across the organization.

Through careful planning and execution, DayBlink Consulting delivered a solution that reduced costs, improved scalability and helped the client adapt to changing demands. The shift to a cloud-first mindset positioned the organization for future growth and innovation.