FranchiseDirectLogo

Having moved their business onto AWS, instead of building an in-house AWS hosting support capability, Franchise Direct (www.franchisedirect.com) opted to outsource the management of their AWS environment to AWS certified Managed Service Provider TerraAlto. With TerraAlto ensuring that Franchise Direct’s AWS environment remains available, secure and well-maintained, Franchise Direct has been able to focus their IT team on the application innovations that have enabled Franchise Direct to galvanise their position as the world’s leading portal for franchise business opportunities.

About the Customer

Franchise Direct (www.franchisedirect.com) are pioneers of the internet lead generation for the franchise industry. With over twenty years of online marketing experience under their belt, Franchise Direct is now the world’s recognised leading portal for franchise and business opportunities.
Franchise Direct’s website network is made up of fifteen multilingual sites targeting international markets across North America, Europe, Latin America, Australia, Africa and Asia. This extensive network allows franchisors to connect with prospective franchisees on a global scale. No other portal in the franchise industry offers the same expansive reach.

Customer Challenge

With ninety-five per cent of prospective franchisees beginning their research online, Franchise Direct needed a strategic hosting platform and provider that would enable them to remain the definitive online resource for anyone seeking well-grounded information on the franchise industry.
Franchise Direct realised that in order to continue to grow globally, they needed a scalable hosting platform with global reach and a rich suite of cloud-based services on which to run and evolve their business.
Having selected the AWS platform, Franchise Direct realised they needed the support of a specialist AWS consulting and managed service partner qualified to manage their AWS environment and capable of helping them unleash the full potential of AWS.

Why the Customer Choose TerraAlto

  • Expertise: As an advanced consulting partner dedicated to AWS since 2013, with significant experience in working with global brands hosting websites on AWS, Franchise Direct 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 Franchise Direct 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 Franchise Direct and TerraAlto both based in Dublin, the convenience of being able to meet face-to-face when needed also played its part in Franchise Direct’s decision to partner with TerraAlto.

TerraAlto Solution

TerraAlto provides Franchise Direct with a Managed Service solution that ensures the Franchise Direct AWS environment remains available, performant, secure, well-maintained and cost-optimised.

This comprehensive suite of managed service includes the following:

  • Service Desk: The first point of contact for Franchise Direct AWS users who wish to raise incidents, access requests and change requests with the TerraAlto managed service team.
  • Availability and Performance monitoring: Ensures that AWS availability and performance metrics are monitored on an ongoing basis and that any events and/or breaches of acceptable tolerances are responded to 24 x 7.
  • Security Monitoring: All identified security threats to the Franchise Direct AWS environment are actioned expediently.
  • Incident Response and Resolution: Franchise Direct’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 Franchise Direct 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 Franchise Direct data residing on AWS is backed up regularly and is available for restoration in line with Franchise Direct’s Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives.
  • Capacity Management: Utilises real-time monitoring and threshold-based alerting to manage the capacity of AWS instances, disks and databases supporting Franchise Direct workloads.
  • Security Access Management: Ensures that access to Franchise Direct’s AWS resources remains restricted to authorised individuals and groups using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
  • Cost Optimisation: On-going proactive monitoring of Franchise Direct’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 Franchise Direct’s change management policy.
  • Application Release Management: TerraAlto also manage the deployment of new application releases into the production environment through an automated application deployment pipeline.

Results and Benefits

  • Enabling Focus On Business Growth: With production environment maintenance outsourced to TerraAlto, Franchise Direct 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, Franchise Direct 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 Franchise Direct’s 15 websites remain available for users globally 24×7.

About TerraAlto

TerraAlto is an AWS Advanced Consulting and MSP Partner with an AWS DevOps Competency, who help organisations build and manage advanced solutions utilising AWS services for big data, IoT and enterprise data platforms. With an extensive experience of delivering greenfield implementations, migrations and application innovations, TerraAlto have worked with a wide range of client organisations 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 their 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 their flexibility of engagement and quick delivery.