Case Study
Convey Services: Modern cloud management strategy supports scaling of virtual event platform
April 2022
Modern cloud management resolves scalability, reliability, and performance – opening new market opportunities for growth
Cloud Conventions migrated their virtual event services to a new Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment to improve performance and reliability, as well as to rapidly scale in response to customer demand. However, the company soon realized that the ongoing monitoring, optimization, and management of their new AWS environment involved complexities beyond their internal capabilities. Cloud Conventions engaged Effectual as an experienced cloud partner to provide modern managed services expertise.
About Cloud Conventions
Cloud Conventions from Convey Services is an enterprise virtual/hybrid event management platform that redefines the exhibitor and attendee experience to allow companies to provide easy access to in-depth product information, showcase their brands with graphics and videos, create calls to action, and generate immediate sales leads. Used around the world for large managed events and smaller self-directed meetings, conferences and corporate kickoffs, Cloud Conventions automates exhibitors and virtual booths, continuing education, speaker sessions and reminders, invitations and email communication, while at the same time producing detailed analytics on attendee, session and exhibitor activity.
The Challenge
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Cloud Conventions was in a unique position to provide a sophisticated virtual event platform to replace a growing list of live events cancelled due to the new restrictions on live gatherings. While demand for their services was growing rapidly, the company began encountering performance and reliability challenges – including outages on their hosted infrastructure.
Despite Cloud Conventions’ repeated requests to address these urgent issues, the existing hosting provider was unresponsive. The company learned that the provider had them on a hypervisor that was out-of-date and obsolete and that they would not be able to upgrade for over 30 days. With numerous high-profile conferences in the US and around the globe scheduled within the next several weeks, this response was unacceptable.
Choosing the AWS Cloud for improved scalability and reliability
To resolve these issues and establish a secure, scalable environment capable of growing with customer demand, Cloud Conventions made the decision to migrate immediately to the AWS Cloud as a lift-and-shift move – with plans to pursue application and database modernization efforts in the near future.
Engaging Effectual to manage, modernize, and optimize workloads
Soon after Cloud Conventions’ development team finished migrating workloads to AWS, they realized they needed a partner with advanced cloud expertise to properly manage the new environment.
An AWS Premier Consulting Partner, Effectual is a cloud first professional and managed services company with a primary objective to enable modernization and solve business challenges with cloud technologies. Effectual’s Modernization Engineers™ deliver expert support and critical guidance on workload performance, acting as an extension of customer internal IT resources. The company also identifies opportunities to optimize security, operations, and cloud spend.
For Cloud Conventions, Effectual’s expertise and capabilities matched their needs precisely.
Adopting Effectual’s Modern Cloud Management Platform
After conducting an initial analysis of Cloud Conventions’ new AWS environment to ensure it was configured correctly, Effectual helped the company develop and implement a modern cloud strategy for governing the use of cloud services across their organization. This included onboarding Cloud Conventions to Effectual’s Modern Cloud Management platform to manage and monitor the health of their workloads, as well as to guide their cloud usage.
Effectual’s platform was developed using recommended controls by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) in conjunction with the AWS Well Architected Framework. The solution also applies Infrastructure as Code automation to deploy and manage customer environments.
As a Modern Cloud Management customer, Cloud Conventions receives the following services and support:
Solutions & Outcomes
Summary
Effectual’s modern cloud management services not only resolved Cloud Conventions’ scalability, reliability, and performance issues, but also allowed their development team to refocus time and energy on other core initiatives and opportunities.
In addition, by moving to AWS with ongoing cloud management support from Effectual, the company can meet strict regulatory compliance for PCI, HIPAA, CIS, and GDPR. This has opened new opportunities for Cloud Conventions’ to bid contracts and expand its business into international markets.
Most importantly, Cloud Conventions can now onboard new customers and deliver engaging, high-quality virtual event services with the confidence that their infrastructure is well-managed, closely monitored, and optimized for the AWS Cloud.
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