Innovation at the Intersection of Cloud, Automation, & Security
Our secret sauce
DayBlink Consulting has a long track record of helping our clients plan and execute big, complex and messy digital initiatives. Over the last 10 years, many of those initiatives have spanned a variety of cloud programs and initiatives for major Fortune 500 companies and mid-market organizations. Since then, we have led many public and private cloud strategic initiatives, from private cloud optimization and adoption, to an all-in public cloud migration and private cloud decommissioning. We have also supported clients in pursuing a strategy of a hybrid cloud as an optimal mix in terms of capabilities and cost. Further, our strength and what sets us apart, is our focus on the intersection of Cloud, Security and Automation. We believe this triad must be contemplated as a whole for an organization to rapidly innovate and bring new products and services to market, with cloud platforms that are highly performant and available cost effectively, while remaining resilient to the ever-present and continuous threat of a major cybersecurity attack.
Maturing cloud security capabilities and posture
The accelerated migration to, and adoption of, public cloud services has ushered in the need for common on-premise information security and privacy practices be adapted to cloud environments. The dynamic, distributed and ephemeral nature of modern cloud solutions, such as containerized architectures, adds an additional layer of complexity that we help our clients address.
Featured Case Studies
Cloud Security Controls Definition
For a large InfoSec organization, defined and documented cloud security policies and standards as part of an enterprise-wide cloud-first strategic initiative. The security practices contemplated were extensive and include: secure code development (e.g., SAST, DAST, SCA, etc.), vulnerability scanning of containerized services for image, registry and runtime security, holistic monitoring and observability capabilities from common log services (e.g., API transaction logs, resource logs, VPC flow logs, config history, etc.).
Cloud Security Maturity Study
As part of a larger cybersecurity maturity study, DayBlink Consulting assessed the maturity of security capabilities for cloud infrastructure and applications for a large technology organization. Identified several dozen gaps and risks including inadequate access controls and over-privilege to critical resources, limited inventory of key cloud assets and curated security treatment, and inconsistent adoption of DevSecOps practices, to name a few.
Cloud Data Protection Assessment & Multi-year Roadmap
For a large healthcare organization, conducted comprehensive data protection posture assessment that spanned both on-premise and hybrid cloud environments. Identified several dozen key gaps and opportunities, sized them based on potential value in reducing risk against level of effort, and incorporated them into their overall three-year security roadmap. Notable cloud gaps were insufficient cloud DLP and observability capabilities.
Accelerating cloud automation and operations hardening programs
With the wide adoption and shift to the public cloud as part of many cloud-first transformation programs, the next wave of opportunity lies in all things automation. Cloud automation is crucial for its ability to enhance operational efficiency, accelerate deployment times, optimize resource utilization, and enable organizations to scale dynamically in response to changing demands.
Featured Case Studies
Cloud Automation
AI and ML are grabbing all the headlines, overshadowing a great deal of value that can be derived from tried and tested automation capabilities as part of a mature cloud operations program. With the possibilities extensive, DayBlink Consulting helps our clients build and execute programs and automation roadmaps that span a vast landscape of cloud automation needs including but not limited to: infrastructure provisioning and IaC, configuration management, containerization, CI/CD, versioning, auto-scaling, load balancing, database operations, networking, business continuity and recovery rebuilds and backups, compliance attestation, and reporting of resource usage optimization.
Establish & Operationalize SRE
For a large Cloud Engineering Group (200+ employees), defined cloud SRE operating model then helped lead the operationalization of the function. This included organization design, operations management framework (adapting and adopting SRE, DevOps and related concepts), roles and responsibility definition and rationalization, workflow and process definition and implementation, tools set-up and automation enablement, continuous training and upskilling programs, performance management, SLO/SLIs and knowledge management.
Application Refactoring & Migration
For one of the largest telecom providers in North America, there was a need to centralize private cloud capacity as part of an effort to consolidate regional data centers into their national data center footprint. DayBlink Consulting was engaged to assist developing a source-of-truth inventory for nearly 400+ applications that were in scope. We led requirements consultations to understand each applications migration approach (e.g., re-platforming, re-architecting, lift-and-shift, hybrid, etc.), created a phased migration approach for all interdependent applications and services, and facilitated the migration and onboarding of applications and services to several private and public cloud hosting solutions.
Establishing and operationalizing cloud economics and Financial Operations functions
For all the speed, innovation, and flexibility that come with public cloud solutions, an unfortunate consequence is the ability to quickly overspend. A robust and mature cloud economics and FinOps function is critically important. This function enables organizations to gain better visibility into their cloud spending, make informed decisions about resource and capacity allocation, control costs effectively, and maximize the value derived from cloud investments.
Featured Case Studies
FinOps & BizOps Optimization
DayBlink Consulting has helped several clients with a variety of FinOps and BizOps optimization initiatives for their on-premise and cloud-based environments. This has spanned consolidation under the organizations enterprise agreement with major cloud providers to maturing financial planning and forecasting, enhancing cost visibility capabilities, resource usage optimization (e.g., use of reserved instances, committed use, savings plans, etc.), show-back/charge-back models, and TCO cost models.
Public vs. Private Cloud TCO Analysis
As part of a large multi-cloud ecosystem, supported the client to assess public vs. private cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) for public vs. private cloud. This included capacity planning and financial model set-up and design, assessed public vs. private cloud total cost of ownership (TCO), then developed cross-department quarterly true-up processes for ongoing capacity and workload planning.
Public Cloud Services Cost Optimization
Client had a drastic increase in year-over-year spend for public cloud services. Management had limited visibility into cloud data usage and allocation of resources, cloud teams were unable to properly forecast future usage, and there was lack of collaboration and ownership between application owners and finance teams. DayBlink Consulting was engaged to establish a cloud spend governance and oversight program, set-up and provide management tools to forecast usage and optimize costs across applications and accounts, and developed reporting and spend visualizations for the top spending application teams as part of a show-back model.
Quarterbacking migrations to the cloud and cloud modernization programs
Cloud migration initiatives are a challenging undertaking that requires careful planning and consideration up front, diligent oversight & meticulous execution, followed up with a thoughtful organizational change management and roll out approach that minimizes disruption. At DayBlink, we regularly navigate these complex initiatives with our clients, ensuring that we start with a solution that fits the strategic objectives of the organization and finish with the delivery of a secure, resilient, and scalable solution that delivers immediate value and provides a foundation for future innovation and growth.
Featured Case Studies
Cloud-First Modernization
As part of a multi-year cloud-first modernization program, DayBlink Consulting was engaged by a large entertainment and media company to lead their Cybersecurity Organizations migration to the cloud while also adapting and expanding their cloud security capabilities. This included planning and then executing a multi-year roadmap (100+ projects) to enhance cloud security capabilities with a separate collection of initiatives to migrate security solutions to the cloud. Additionally, DayBlink consulting was responsible for a variety of cost and budget forecasting analysis and reconciliation.
Public & Private Migration Plan
As part of a large hybrid cloud transformation for a major technology company, DayBlink Consulting managed an end-to-end private cloud expansion across the following lifecycle: plan, design, procure, install, deploy, and validate. This included decommissioning of all EOSL equipment and repurposing all reusable equipment. Completed buildout of a multi-million dollar OpenStack and separate VMware environment from design/requirements and procurement to private cloud installation and application onboarding.
Private Cloud Readiness & Launch
For one of the largest communications providers in the U.S., DayBlink Consulting planned, coordinated and supported operational readiness and go-live of a large private cloud launch. This included developing operational readiness processes, procedures, and runbooks, coordinating onboarding of internal customers (product and app solutions), defining and managing customer experience programs and practices as part of private cloud as a service offering, and defining and operationalizing platform SLAs and SLOs
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