Brightside: A multi-cloud strategy for business innovation
Find out how Brightside met all client and partner security compliance requirements through the adoption of an optimised multi-cloud environment.
Brightside
Brightside is a global company providing extended warranty and insurance for consumers and retailers across Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and Asia.
Founded in Australia in 1983, Brightside has expanded to over 200 staff with operations in eight countries.
Key benefits
- Ongoing cost management and capability improvements
- Secure managed services ensuring compliance obligations are met
- Streamlined and in-house team to focus on strategic, added value work
- Seamless service reducing the complexity of a multi-cloud strategy
An ambitious migration plan
Brightside embarked on a digital transformation strategy to migrate from a predominantly on-premise IT environment to the cloud.
The key outcome of this strategy was to create a more agile, more resilient and less capital-intensive infrastructure to better support Brightside’s distributed international operations, including a back-office team in the Philippines.
Brightside used multiple cloud platforms, including their own claims management system (known as ‘Phoenix’), but these were too large for their in-house team to effectively manage whilst keeping up with important innovation projects. They were looking for a solution and a partner that can help assist them with their ambitious migration plans and help them optimise their cloud costs.
Gaining flexibility through the cloud
Working with Interactive as their Cloud and Managed Services partner, Brightside has transitioned the majority of their workloads to either Public or Private Cloud services.
This has included the deployment of Microsoft Office 365 and SQL Server on Azure, the migration of Brightside’s own claims management system (known as ‘Phoenix’), Great Plains ERP, AD and File storage to Interactive’s private cloud and most recently, a successful proof of concept (PoC) migrating Phoenix to AWS.
Brightside initially undertook a ‘lift and shift’ of Phoenix to Interactive’s fully managed Private Cloud platform. In doing so, they successfully moved to an OPEX model and released their small in-house IT team from the administrative burden of managing data centre infrastructure.
As the business evolved and expanded operations globally, Brightside continued to leverage the advantages of public cloud for greater flexibility to develop and pilot innovative new go-to-market products as well as the agility to better manage seasonal traffic spikes. Brightside completed a proof of concept with Interactive, running a test environment of its claims management platform on AWS. The project was successful from a business and financial perspective, as well as for all key operational, support and technical metrics.
The additional advantage for Brightside was peace of mind that their AWS PoC environment would be managed with the same level of responsiveness and service excellence experienced within Interactive’s Private Cloud.
"Interactive has the systems, processes and the adaptive expertise we need to support our complex, multi-cloud environment. Interactive is an extension of my team and I can’t speak too highly of their account management and service delivery capabilities." - Tuan Tran, Head of IT, Brightside
The successful migration of its core system to an Interactive managed AWS public cloud has given Brightside the confidence to scale up and move its Phoenix production workloads into AWS, and fully embrace a dynamic multi-cloud environment – all under Interactive’s management. This will enable Brightside to easily move cloud workloads around to reduce costs, take advantage of new technologies and services, comply with any specific client or partner requirements, and ensure a best fit solution for each workload.
Building a strategic cloud road map for the future
With Interactive providing best practice, ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified secure managed services via its Network Operations Centre (NOC) to support its multi-cloud environment, Brightside can meet any of its client or partner security compliance requirements.
Brightside is also utilising Interactive’s public managed service to optimise its cloud footprint and constantly evaluate ‘best fit’ cloud services and pricing models to improve cost and operational efficiencies across Interactive’s Private Cloud, AWS and Azure environments.
"We have a finite budget, so we need to balance spend and capability. Any cost savings we make from moving to public cloud we can reinvest in other parts of the business."
For Brightside, the value Interactive brings lies not only in helping to deploy and manage their existing environment but also in their intimate knowledge of the Brightside business and their ability to provide strategic advice on how best to incorporate new technologies into future road maps.
