Global security firm G4S has slashed two thirds from the running costs of a business-critical tracking application by moving it to the Cloud.
G4S - formed from the merger of Securicor and Group 4 - is the world’s largest security firm, operating in 110 countries. Every year it transports billions of pounds worth of cash and valuables, relying on its home-grown eViper software to track and manage their movement.
But, two years ago, the company was struggling to manage eViper’s legacy code and the sluggishness of its managed services provide to make changes. It could take six weeks to three months to negotiate price and install a new system with the managed service provider, hampering G4S’s plans to roll out eViper to a further 20 or 30 countries. By moving to a Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud platform, the company can add new countries pretty much instantly.
Says Richard Wallace, technical director at G4S:
While cost savings helped strengthen the business case for moving to the Cloud, reliability, security, availability and scalability were just as strong considerations. The company rigorously tested Azure to ensure that these requirements were met.
As a result, as an extra insurance policy against unexpected downtime - unacceptable for such a mission-critical element of its business - eViper is simultaneously hosted in different data centres. The application can switch over to another data centre in the event of a problem. Given the business it’s in, security issues were clearly also going to be closely scrutinised. Says Wallace:
Wallace was happy that Azure more than met the grade, particularly as there was encryption from day one and that there would be no personal or sensitive data in the system. All data would be anonymised, so that data protection was not breached. Adopting Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform has enabled G4S to meet its expansion ambitions and save money. Key for Wallace, however, is the fact that the end users have not noticed any difference in the service.
Although Wallace is clear of the benefits of Cloud and the company is investigating using Cloud for other applications, there is one thing he is not happy with: the name. Wallace explains:
