Case Study

TM Consulting Trusts Pantek to Support Customer Applications Running in AWS and Azure Cloud Environments

Details

Compay Name: TM Consulting
Date: November 2020
Location: Enid, Oklahoma

TM Consulting develops custom software delivered through the cloud as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

The Challenge: Find Expertise to Support Both AWS and Azure Cloud Environments

TM Consulting develops custom software delivered through the cloud as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. The company’s Tax Roll Inquiry application runs on a Microsoft Azure public cloud platform and is used by nearly every county in Oklahoma to provide access to public property tax information and to serve as a vehicle for citizens to pay their property taxes.

The firm also developed a custom application for Keystone Food Service, which provides K-12 schools with food and service personnel to feed students. The application makes it easy for personnel to submit orders for food deliveries to the schools from the Keystone warehouses. This application runs on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud platform.

TM Consulting initially relied on a software development partner to manage both cloud environments. But as the workload demand on both platforms continued to increase, the company experienced server performance issues.

“Our development partner was strong in coding applications, but monitoring and managing a cloud infrastructure requires a different skillset,” says John Westrope, a TM Consulting president as well as a software developer. “Our server log files and directories were filling up, which meant we were using unnecessary storage resources. And at times, the performance of our applications would degrade as we fell behind in keeping our servers patched.”

“Pantek provides a comprehensive, detailed approach to managing cloud environments, and after one conversation with their team, we knew our applications would be in good hands.”

John Westrope

TM Consulting President

The Results: Decreased Stress Increases the Focus on Application Development

When Pantek began managing the AWS and Azure environments, its cloud experts initially assessed the set-up and the configuration of the cloud infrastructures. Pantek validated TM Consulting was fully optimizing compute resources from a cost perspective and identified areas in which enhancements should be applied.

“Pantek did a great job strengthening our security posture to protect against cyberattacks,” Westrope says. “This included clearing out an email bot creating extra log files and harmful virus files.”

When TM Consulting began working with a new software development partner, a glitch occurred during the transition from the previous developer. A procedure caused one of the servers to shut down after filling up with temporary junk files. “Pantek immediately started working on the issue and fixed it within 45 minutes,” Westrope says. “That demonstrates just how quickly they respond to any of our needs.”

Pantek also provided a new backup procedure for the AWS environment. “Any time we want to set up something new, Pantek is there to show us how and advise on the best way to achieve our mission,” Westrope emphasizes.

Since forming the partnership with Pantek, the TM Consulting applications have performed consistently overall (in both cloud environments) and continue to deliver the services customers require. The server environments are clean and efficient, and the operating systems are always up-to-date.

“And because we don’t have to worry about either environment, we are under less stress and can focus on our application development efforts,” Westrope says. “It’s great to have a second set of eyes with Pantek taking care of things we don’t have the time for and warning us in advance of any pending issues.”

The Solution: Pantek Managed Cloud Services

To solve the challenge of monitoring and managing the AWS and Azure environments, Westrope conducted online research and found several positive customer reviews on Pantek. After talking with Pantek cloud experts, he was convinced they were the exact partner his company was looking for.

“It’s rare to find a cloud partner who can provide expertise in both AWS and Azure,” Westrope points out. “Pantek provides a comprehensive, detailed approach to managing cloud environments, and after one conversation with their team, we knew our applications would be in good hands.”

As part of the Managed Cloud Services offering, Pantek provides systems administration and issue diagnosis for TM Consulting’s cloud infrastructures, operating systems, and database platforms in AWS and Azure. Pantek also provides proactive performance monitoring and alerting services along with server patching, software updates, and security updates.

Another key component of Pantek Managed Cloud Services is the analysis of cloud infrastructures to recommend optimization strategies and best practices for application performance and resource cost reduction. And when technical support is required from a third-party technology vendor, Pantek intervenes to streamline service incidents.

Case Study Overview

  • Log files and directories on cloud servers provisioning applications to customers were filling up.
  • The servers were using unnecessary storage resources and experiencing degraded performance.
  • To solve these challenges TM Consulting required a cloud partner with infrastructure expertise.
  • The partner needed to know how to manage and monitor both AWS and Azure infrastructures.

What Pantek Managed Cloud Services Delivers

  • Systems administration and issue diagnosis for AWS and Azure cloud infrastructures.
  • Operating system and database support to ensure application performance.
  • Proactive performance monitoring and alerting services.
  • Server patching, software updates, and security updates.
  • Analysis of cloud infrastructures to recommend optimization strategies for resource cost reduction.

Tools and Technologies

  • Amazon Web Services
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Linux operating system
  • Microsoft Windows
  • AWS EC2 server instances
  • MariaDB
  • Microsoft SQL