Alkimii Resolving the Hospitality Industry’s Connected Communication Problem supported by TerraAlto with a NextGen Monitoring Solution

Executive Summary

By providing an integrated, end-to-end managed services approach for application, infrastructure and security as well as a preconfigured core application landscape with bespoke integration and workflow capabilities, cloud hosting, business and IT operations support, TerraAlto has not only reduced Alkimii’s costs, enhanced efficiency, exposure, services and customer experience but has supported Alkimii in their delivery of a unique all-in-one, cloud-based hotel management solution that is easy to use, accessible anywhere and enables hospitality businesses to boost occupancy, streamline operations, optimize ADR and save money all with one simple tool. As part of this experience, TerraAlto has worked closely with the Alkimii software development and technical application management teams on their usage of DataDog to implement comprehensive monitor, alerting and observability across a range of platform metrics with alerting to different channels.

About Alkimii

Alkimii is a fast-growing, Dublin-based start-up specialized in Cloud Software for the hospitality industry. Every department in the hospitality industry needs its own unique software to run effectively and Alkimii is changing ways of thinking in the hospitality industry by providing highly functional interfaces that make this possible. Alkimii’s software enables hospitality businesses to effectively oversee their respective departments through integrated applications that, among other features; can manage and use forms of identification for teams, track sales and payroll costs with comprehensive real-time data for revenue as well as facilitating incident reporting, checklists, visitor logs, appointments, and tasks for logbooks

Customer Challenge

  • Data Security: This was one of the most important factors that Alkimii had to take into consideration before deciding to migrate the applications and the business process of their organization to the cloud
  • Availability of sufficient resources or expertise in cloud management: It is difficult for non-trained employees, lacking expertise, to handle cloud management services
  • Partial governance provided to IT infrastructure
  • Cost of the cloud
  • Compliance of data
  • To be able to monitor and alert on the health of the multiple infrastructure and application components, the units of work and transactions as they traverse the application stack and the overall platform.

Why Alkimii Chose TerraAlto

  • Expertise: As an advanced consulting partner dedicated to AWS since 2013, with significant experience in working with global brands hosting websites on AWS, Alkimii were confident that TerraAlto had the AWS knowledge and expertise they needed in their corner.
  • Service-Fit: TerraAlto’ s comprehensive set of services included everything Alkimii were looking for in an AWS managed service partner: 24×7 AWS monitoring and incident response, security management and ongoing application release support and maintenance.
  • Local Presence: With Alkimii and TerraAlto both based in Dublin, the convenience of being able to meet face-to-face when needed also played its part in Alkimii’s decision to partner with TerraAlto.

Partner (TerraAlto) Solution

Alkimii needed a consistent and agile platform to expand its capabilities to innovate on behalf of its customers. TerraAlto provided Alkimii with a Managed Service Solution that ensures the Alkimii AWS environment remains available, performant, secure, well-maintained, and cost-optimized.

This comprehensive suite of managed services includes the following:

  • Service Desk: The first point of contact for Alkimii AWS users who wish to raise incidents, access requests and change requests with the TerraAlto managed service team.
  • Security Monitoring: All identified security threats to the Alkimii AWS environment are actioned expediently.
  • Incident Response and Resolution: Alkimii’s AWS-related incidents and problems are identified and resolved in a timely manner. New incidents are identified through automated monitoring and alerting, as well as from directly reported incidents from Alkimii AWS users through the TerraAlto Service Desk. TerraAlto cloud engineers are available to respond to incidents 24×7 within pre-agreed SLAs.
  • Database and Instance Backup and Recovery: All Alkimii data residing on AWS is backed up regularly and is available for restoration in line with Alkimii’s Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives.
  • Capacity Management: TerraAlto manages the capacity of AWS instances, disks and databases supporting Alkimii workloads
  • Security Access Management: Ensures that access to Alkimii’s AWS resources remains restricted to authorized individuals and groups using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
  • Cost Optimization: On-going proactive monitoring of Alkimii’s AWS costs to identify and drive reductions in AWS costs.
  • AWS Configuration Maintenance: TerraAlto are fully responsible for all aspects of AWS configuration maintenance including DNS management, SSL administration and whitelisting with all changes being implemented in compliance with Alkimii’s change management policy.
  • Comprehensive gathering of metrics, logs, and information from relevant components of the application stack at AWS service, infrastructure, OS, application, and transaction level. Alerting to several different channels for specific events or failures.
  • Ability to have a current and historical view of the entire application stack at the infrastructure, OS, application, and transaction levels, in consolidated and flexible dashboard/s in DataDog.
  • Ability to do quick and deep analysis of relevant, metrics, logs and other information gathered in Datadog.

Results and Benefits

  • Enabling Focus on Business Growth: With production environment maintenance outsourced to TerraAlto, Alkimii have been able to focus their IT and business teams on application innovation and business growth, safe in the knowledge that the availability and security of their AWS environment are being managed by an AWS-certified Managed Service Provider
  • Scalability: Considering the inherent scalability of the AWS platform, along with the flexibility with which TerraAlto can deploy operational capacity, Alkimii now have a platform and a partner capable of supporting their evolving business needs
  • High Availability: The highly available, fault-tolerant architecture of the AWS solution architecture coupled with TerraAlto’ s SLA-driven managed service means that Alkimii’s website remains available for users globally 24×7

About TerraAlto

TerraAlto is an AWS Advanced Consulting and MSP Partner with an AWS DevOps Competency, who helps organizations build and manage advanced solutions utilizing AWS services for big data, IoT and enterprise data platforms. With extensive experience in delivering greenfield implementations, migrations, and application innovations, TerraAlto has worked with a wide range of client organizations ranging from tech start-ups to large global organizations.

As an approved member of the AWS Managed Service Provider Partner Program, TerraAlto provides 24-7 managed services for AWS environments in Europe and in Asia (including China). As an active participant in the AWS Well-Architected Framework Program, TerraAlto helps its clients to ensure secure and compliant usage of AWS services including the building of automated compliance frameworks for enterprise-wide exception alerting and reporting.

TerraAlto is known and recommended for its flexibility of engagement and quick delivery.