In the space of a year Precise, Software, a midsized provider of application management technologies based in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, Israel completely transformed its IT infrastructure to virtualization and cloud software, saving more than $2 million of its annual IT costs. This reduction came through cutting half of their IT staff and closely examining a variety of other technologies.
Precise completed a soup to nuts transformation to the cloud in 2009. The process was faster and less hassle than its IT director could have predicted. How did they do it? There were no expensive consultants, no special sauce, and they went about the process by using common cloud vendors and careful cost analysis.
- Choose your cloud tech carefully. Precise used a common collection of cloud apps, including Gmail, Salesforce, NetSuite.com, Marketo, and Drupal. The idea was to streamline sales and back office operations and integrate CRM and email in the cloud.
- Virtualize everywhere. Precise cut its server spending by a third, to $400,000 annually, by virtualizing its servers.
- Rapidly migrate ERP and CRM It took Precise three days to deploy Salesforce and Netsuite.com, and fully integrate them. This included a mere five hours to migrate all the company’s data into both products.
- Get off Microsoft servers. It took them another five days to migrate from Exchange Server and SharePoint to Google Mail/Google Sites. Employees can still access Office desktop applications in addition to Google docs.
- More fiber. Precise moved to AT&T Fiber networks and is saving $8000 monthly in WAN costs.
- Analyze your mobile minutes and be smarter about paying for them. Precise had a monthly mobile bill of $12,000 which they slashed in half through using AT&T and Verizon minute pooling programs. Simultaneously switched from Blackberry to iPhone, saving $150K a year on licenses and data charges.
- Replaced landline telecom with VoIP and reduced bills from $14,000/month to $1500/month.
