The Client operates a U.S.-based fast-casual restaurant known for offering fresh produce and wholesome food with over 1,000 franchise locations across 45 states. The Client founded its business in the late 1990s and has grown substantially over the last 5-10 years. With that growth came a need for more advanced and multifaceted infrastructure support. 

“We initially came to Connectria primarily from a security perspective. We were looking at changing from our current managed security provider and consolidating additional services and support for an existing AWS environment,” said the Client’s Director of Enterprise Systems and Data. 

Challenge

Most immediately, Connectria provided the necessary support for the Client as it transitioned from a previous provider. Afterwards, Connectria focused on support for the Client’s tech stack which is bifurcated between two buckets. 

The first focuses on the technology leveraged in the Client’s fast-casual restaurant locations such as POS and back-of-house systems. The other focuses on the Client’s support center which includes all software, subscriptions, and infrastructure supporting its restaurant locations. Recently, the Client also launched its mobile app with the app infrastructure housed in AWS. 

“Our information technology and security teams, like many businesses, are on the smaller side. This is primarily the reason we wanted to work with a partner, like Connectria, that had a deep bench of AWS expertise and support. Had we not had Connectria on hand to help with upgrades to prepare for our mobile app launch, we would have left the business open for things to go wrong and potentially cost us downtime,” said the Director of Enterprise Systems and Data. 

Solution

Connectria’s solution combines its comprehensive AWS Managed Services customized with specific focuses for the Client’s unique infrastructure. For example, the Client’s primary focuses are on storage (S3), computing (EC2 and EKS, and security (IAM).

The Client leverages Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for object storage through a web service interface, as well as S3 Glacier for data archiving and backup. For computing, the Client runs a mixture of standard EC2 instances and Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS) for its mobile infrastructure. Finally, the Client leverages Identity Access Management (IAM) to securely manage identities and access to AWS services and resources.

“Storage is a big deal for this Client because it ingests the data for its data warehouse through AWS. In terms of security, the identity access management piece is great for managing the user base, leveraging security groups, and ensuring the Client is following the latest best practices. The Client also started running Lambdas for automation tasks. As the Client upgraded infrastructure to manage very difficult and complex processes within AWS, having a partner like Connectria to answer questions or provide hands-on assistance has saved the Client considerable time and effort,” said James Roarty, Connectria VP of Cloud Sales. 

Results

In the short time the Client has worked with Connectria, it has already been able to point out several opportunities for improvement, particularly from a cost perspective. These opportunities have since saved the Client considerable AWS infrastructure costs.

“Connectria has been able to succinctly provide several different reports which pointed out savings opportunities and the tasks the Client needed to execute to take advantage of those cost savings opportunities. On the security side, Connectria’s cloud management platform, TRiA, offers compliance insight scores and based on its remediations, the Client has seen the needle move in terms of greater compliance for things like CIS and PCI,” said Roarty.

He continues, “In terms of responsiveness, Connectria can identify, investigate, and remediate security issues very quickly. A lot of the services and tooling Connectria provides, like the TRiA platform, have made it markedly easier for this Client to manage its AWS environment. The Client has also been very impressed by the amount of complimentary and self-service education opportunities AWS also offers.”