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Australian Red Cross gains speed, stability, and savings by optimizing cloud platforms

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When the Australian Red Cross, a leading humanitarian aid and community services charity and an auxiliary to the Australian government, realized that their data platform was no longer performing optimally for their critical applications, they turned to Pythian for help. Pythian was chosen because of their extensive practical experience with the latest database technologies, including Microsoft SQL Server and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and their existing track record of maintaining reliable, scalable and stable cloud environments. The Problem The hardware the Australian Red Cross had been using was outdated and was also costing them way more than it should. The solution would have to do the following:
  • Perform at high availability for critical systems.
  • Conduct transaction processing of data for all major services–including services for donors, volunteers, students and clients.
  • Reduce operational costs.
The Cloud Solution After a consultation, Pythian came up with a solution that would address all concerns. It was determined that the best way to give the Australian Red Cross what they were looking for would be to utilize cloud platforms. The organization’s enterprise applications were already running on and are certified to run on Microsoft SQL Server . The Red Cross also had a direct link to an AWS data center in Australia, which made data transfer easier to stay with AWS over other cloud providers. Microsoft SQL databases were upgraded from 2005 and 2008 instances into Microsoft SQL 2016 and standardized across the board, which resulted in performance improvement, better access to data and newer features, and better security. Pythian took advantage of AWS Availability Zones to configure database servers across different geographic locations to ensure high availability of critical data. Improved speed and savings Since the new cloud platforms have been in place, the Red Cross has noticed significant cost savings. They have also been benefiting from critical stability and general speed of processing, which has been a positive change for users of their business applications. "Pythian offered multidisciplinary resources and a market-leading consumption-based, flexible services offering that allowed us to maximize the use of time. Their model meant that we paid only for the time we used, yet had access to top experts with very deep technical expertise when we needed it.” — Danijel Andric, Technical Services Manager, Australian Red Cross Read the case study for full details on exactly how Pythian assisted the Australian Red Cross with their cloud migration.  
Lynda Partner Photo Lynda Partner

Lynda Partner is a self-professed data addict and experiences the power of data every day as Pythian’s Vice President of Analytics-as-a-Service. The author of Pythian’s Love Your Data mantra, Lynda understands very well how data can transform companies into competitive winners and she was the driving force in adding an analytics practice to Pythian’s database focus. Lynda works with companies around the world and across industries to turn data into insights, predictions and products, and is the co-author of Designing Cloud Platforms.

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