About Hallmark Assets
Hallmark Assets is a HR-centric service provider in the field of Outsourced Business Operations & Processes, focusing in the areas of Office Administration, Talent Acquisition & Retention, Human Resource Management & Processing, Accounting & Financial Services and Legal Advisory.
Their services include the provision and maintenance of office space and facilities in and around Klang Valley, allowing clients to focus on revenue generating processes and operations.
The Challenge
Since embarking on their AWS cloud journey in 2019, Hallmark has focused on modernising their on-premise applications, primarily via the use of containerisation technology. But with existing physical hardware aging, Hallmark no longer wanted to invest into conventional on-premise servers.
Hallmark reached out to Uberfusion for advice on how they could capitalise on the use of AWS to provide their application vendors with a cloud-based Docker container environment, so that said vendors would be able to work on containerising existing monolithic applications in a cost-effective manner.
Requirement Gathering
We started with a discovery session, which allowed us to gain a better understanding of Hallmark’s requirements. Hallmark set two key parameters for this exercise, namely:
- Sporadic usage: While Hallmark’s application vendor estimated that the project would require 12 months to complete, the Docker environment would only be required during specific periods for testing
- Cost optimisation: As the environment was only required for testing and not for production, Hallmark wanted to keep costs down
Choosing the Right Service
We evaluated the use of Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Lightsail for this project. Due to this being a non-production environment that would only be used sporadically for testing, we opted to go with Lightsail. Some key reasons for this decision includes:
- Some outbound transfer costs are included with Lightsail but not with EC2 or ECS
- Lightsail costs are lower for basic resource usage compared to the On-Demand Instances of EC2 or ECS
- Hallmark did not require the extra features which comes with EC2 or ECS, e.g. the elasticity for dynamic scaling, or the granularity and range of configuration options for CPU and Memory. Even if this is required in the future, for example when the containerisation exercise is completed, the containers can be easily migrated to EC2 or ECS
The Benefits
Cost Savings
By choosing the most suitable service based on the provided requirements, i.e. Lightsail, we helped Hallmark optimise AWS consumption costs while still retaining high stability and reliability.
Future-ready
As Hallmark’s cloud strategy matures, they will be able to easily move from Lightsail to Amazon EC2 instances in a simple, guided approach. This provides Hallmark with the comfort of knowing that as they grow, they are able to scale to meet their needs.
Extensibility
While Lightsail uses a focused set of features like instances, managed databases and load balancers to make it easier to get started, Hallmark is not limited to just these options. Through Amazon VPC peering, Hallmark can integrate their Lightsail project with the rest of AWS services as and when required.
Testimonial
“ Uberfusion is not just an outsourced vendor, but a trusted advisor. For this particular project, Uberfusion recommended a service that allowed us to reduce cost without compromising our ability to expand in the future. It’s advice like these that makes them our go-to partner for our AWS projects. ”
About Us
fourtitude.asia is a leading technology group focused on helping clients realise their digital needs and objectives. Our organisation comprises several companies in different disciplines – including Uberfusion for development & integration – working in concert with technology at the core of their efforts. We have over 250 employees headquartered in Malaysia, with sales offices in Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Australia.
Uberfusion is a recognised Advanced Consulting Partner of the AWS Partner Network and is also a part of the AWS Solution Provider Program and the AWS Public Sector Program. The company currently holds valid qualifications in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows as part of the AWS Service Delivery Program.
fourtitude.asia continues to be a partner to Hallmark Assets in their digital journey, providing application development and cloud managed services.
Next Steps
We can help you migrate or build .NET-based applications on AWS cloud or modernise existing applications on AWS or your preferred cloud service.
Learn more by visiting our Windows on AWS page or by reaching out to us directly.