Azure Opens the World for Window Nation
Launched in 2006 by two brothers who grew up in the window business, Window Nation has flourished as an industry leader in home improvement services. Commitment to quality has driven their expansion across seven states and has earned them the industry’s coveted Angie’s List Super Service Award. Knowing that hiring and retaining talented people makes the difference, Window Nation was named a 2017 Top Workplaces honoree by The Baltimore Sun.
As Window Nation opens new showrooms in expanding markets, IT Director Oluseye Fadiran has been tasked with scaling the company’s IT capabilities. He turned to Microsoft and eGroup Enabling Technologies to help execute his vision and offers his guidance about Window Nation’s journey to Microsoft Azure.
Fulton
MARYLAND
2006
YEAR FOUNDED
The Goal of Ultimate Scalability
“Window Nation has been experiencing explosive growth,” started Fadiran, “and we see IT as part of that growth strategy. We had to put infrastructure in place that could scale at the rate of the company.”
Fadiran explained some of the issues. “We had a challenge with a Managed Service Provider that was remotely hosting and managing our data center,” he said, “The cost was becoming unbearable.” Maintaining aging equipment also added complexity, plus, as Fadiran explained, “We were not in control of our own proprietary information that was outsourced to our Service Provider.”
Microsoft’s Solution
For Fadiran, the selection process was thorough, but not tedious. “We started our selection by looking at all our options, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure,” he explained.
“We looked at cost and the learning curve. Since we were pretty much a Microsoft shop at Window Nation, it was a no-brainer for us to select Azure. We knew we wouldn’t have to deal with compatibility issues post-migration, and wouldn’t need strenuous training to get up to speed. It was an easy selection process.”
Evaluating the Economics of the Cloud
Window Nation had worked with eGroup Enabling Technologies when migrating to Office 365 for Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype Online. When they asked for guidance, eGroup Enabling Technologies began with a financial planning session. “The cost analysis was where I really got interested and where eGroup Enabling Technologies really helped break it down,” explained Fadiran. “We came to find out that we could actually save about 70% on the monthly data center costs by migrating to Azure.”
“Anything that touches the bottom-line catches executives’ attention,” he continued. “There were technical benefits for IT and the whole company, but showing that we would save thousands a month was what the CFO and CEO are really interested in.”
Some Azure customers are surprised when they receive bills that exceed their expectations, but “We were able to arrive at a fixed cost for the migration effort with eGroup Enabling Technologies,” said Fadiran. “Knowing the maximum cost of the project helped me get buy-in from the executives.”
The Preparation & Migration
“We then did a technical review and analysis, which eGroup Enabling Technologies was very helpful with,” said Fadiran. “We went through a full analysis of the environment, discussing what technical considerations to make, and we did a user adoption assessment which was very helpful.”
“Next,” he continued, “we actually deployed a Domain Controller, file server, and an app server. We tested network shares and permissions, so that we experienced no problems post-migration.”
"The most vocal people who are benefiting from this are the people that are saving a lot of money,” he continued. “They have thanked us for saving what in some cases can be six figures over a three-to-five-year support contract, so it's been important.
The Migration
The setup of virtual machines, services, and the migration of data came next. “The implementation was very easy,” explained Fadiran. “eGroup Enabling Technologies’ engineer was easygoing, let us ask questions, and took time to answer our questions in a way that we could understand.”
Window Nation appreciated the expertise eGroup Enabling Technologies provided. “If we were left alone to do this, it’d have been a lot more complicated,” presumed Fadiran. “eGroup Enabling Technologies’ engineer had done this before for a number of other companies. Because we had no project manager, eGroup Enabling Technologies came up with timelines and prerequisites. We were quite involved because I wanted to learn while eGroup Enabling Technologies led the way.”
“It was a really robust planning phase,” said Fadiran, “and that’s the main reason why we had no issues post-migration. eGroup Enabling Technologies' engineers were really knowledgeable and helped us go through the migration process without major problems.”
The Results & On-Going Support
“Our company is growing at an alarming rate, and our associates are more mobile,” explained Fadiran. “In addition to the cost savings, Azure has also improved our security and our environment is more accessible to our mobile workers.” From the IT perspective, Azure is proving to be less overhead and more flexible. “We’re able to implement more security controls and ease the burden of constant patching. Standing up new servers doesn’t require talking to our hardware provider and licensing and configuring. It’s just as easy as spinning up a virtual machine in our tenant.”
As for those predicted cost savings? “In the past year, since we’ve been in Azure,” Fadiran said, “we have saved between 40-50% compared to our data center, so it’s been a really, really good success.”
Window Nation procures Azure and Office 365 services through eGroup Enabling Technologies as their Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). “We’ve always gotten support from eGroup Enabling Technologies,” explained Fadiran, “and eGroup Enabling Technologies has been helpful for post-migration support of Azure. One of the values we get from using eGroup Enabling Technologies as our CSP is that we get support for things that normally we would’ve been billed for, and that’s really helped us.”
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