Ebbon-Dacs

To support their growth in EU markets, Ebbon-Dacs wanted to ensure that any concerns EU customers may have about Brexit were addressed by deploying their SaaS applications in mainland Europe.

This new, additional infrastructure needed to at least match the highly secure and resilient environment which serves its UK customers extremely well today.

CDW supported the organisation with a move to the cloud by leading the design, licensing and deployment of a high-performance Microsoft Azure solution, hosted in France.

Ebbon-Dacs now has a secure, scalable and cost-effective platform to meet customer requirements and future European growth plans.

The leading provider of hosted, web-based technology platforms that connect and automate the fleet community.

Adopters of the technology can select from a range of platforms, including Leaselink, a procurement solution used by more than 3,000 fleet dealers to supply vehicles to leading Lease organisations on a daily basis.

Other platforms are moDel, which digitises vehicle movement documents, and StockViewer, a new application enabling lease organisations to manage and stock campaigns.

Based in Oxfordshire, with international offices and a partner network in Europe.

Ebbon-Dacs is the leading provider of bespoke business applications that support the daily operations of the contract hire and leasing community. As a result of this, the organisation has a duty to meet bank level security requirements including full compliance with GDPR and ISO 27001. Having been increasingly successful in Europe, it was essential to the organisation that customers and prospects had confidence that Brexit would not affect service delivery or data security.

Being long-termists, Ebbon-Dacs decided not to wait and see what happens with Brexit; rather, they proactively sought to create a European infrastructure which would mitigate the effects of all potential scenarios.

“Our infrastructure review was driven by the fact that we have a growing EU customer base that requires us to deploy our services in different parts of Europe,” says Dave Minto, CIO at Ebbon-Dacs. “The options were either to set up a new data centre or go into the cloud. We also had to consider our resilience and disaster recovery arrangements. The solution needed to ensure that our applications and customer data are secure, scalable and highly available. We wanted a partner to help us achieve that.”

Ebbon-Dacs selected CDW as the ideal technology partner due to its extensive cloud services capabilities and comprehensive expertise, which has earned them Tier 1 Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) status.

“We do have cloud knowledge and experience within the organisation but we needed more of those skills,” says Matt Cannon, Group IT Manager at Ebbon-Dacs. CDW co-ordinated an initial whiteboard session to explore options, followed by an on-site workshop to determine the requirements more precisely.

As they were already a Microsoft ISV partner, Ebbon-Dacs recognised Microsoft Azure as the most suitable cloud platform for their business needs. Workshop discussions confirmed the disadvantages of adding a European data centre: additional support requirements, strain on resources and higher energy costs.

Instead, Microsoft Azure provided a more cost-effective option, minimising demands upon internal resources, overcoming latency concerns and offering the scalability to adapt in line with evolving business needs.

Carl Lawton, Director, Cloud Services & R&D at CDW says “As an innovative organisation, Ebbon-Dacs already have some smaller applications in Azure but moving a mission critical system like Leaselink into the cloud, along with this being their first international infrastructure deployment, raised additional challenges they hadn’t faced before which is why they appointed us. We helped them to understand and develop a robust implementation plan and supported the deployment of what is now a proven, secure and scalable infrastructure.”

CDW’s JumpStart programme was the basis for the discovery and planning phase, resulting in the production of a high-level design document. This was underpinned by an agreement on delivery and billing, put together by CDW’s team of software licensing specialists.

Solutions Architects from the Integrated Technology Solutions team at CDW then leveraged ARM templates to build out a robust and secure environment at pace for the new application servers. CDW supported the deployment of new servers and a new disaster recovery configuration through Microsoft Azure Site Recovery service (ASR).

Following a period of testing, a pilot phase orchestrated by CDW and Microsoft enabled Ebbon-Dacs to demonstrate the new capabilities of the app to its new customers across the desired countries prior to full commitment. The project was completed in little more than eight weeks, after which CDW factored in a degree of ongoing support to ensure the necessary governance and controls.

The new EU-based cloud infrastructure places Ebbon-Dacs in a great position for prolonged expansion while maintaining their first-class facilities and services for the UK.

“Our strategic expansion into Europe requires us to have a highly available, European-based infrastructure, as well as strong disaster recovery facilities and bank level security,” says Dave Minto. “This enables us to roll out to our new customers with the certainty that, whatever Brexit brings, it will not constrain our expanding international reach.”

“The deployment was finished much quicker than I thought, which is a testament to the work of CDW’s team, from the design phase right through to engineering and a very smooth transition,” says Matt Cannon. “We are very impressed by their level of expertise.”

He singled out the JumpStart programme as a key factor in the success of the project, providing initial assessment and design support within a fixed-price package in order to create the necessary momentum towards change.

“JumpStart was ideal for us as a starting point and encompassed everything we needed within a fixed cost,” says Matt Cannon. Ebbon-Dacs is also benefitting from CDW’s CloudCare service to ensure maximum value and efficiency stems from the organisation’s Microsoft Azure investment.

Additionally, CDW worked on the phased introduction of Fortinet appliances for greater security. Carl Lawton, Director, Cloud Services & R&D says: “The IT team at Ebbon-Dacs were given some aggressive timescales from the organisation.

By engaging CDW they have been able to arrange licensing and deploy an Azure environment at pace, while ensuring best practice throughout. This supports the immediate application requirements and acts as a foundation for future European expansion within the Azure cloud.”