Getting the basics right
Simon attended a rhipe-hosted industry event. “The event had beer, so I turned up,” laughs Simon. “Parallo did a presentation, and as a smaller company, I felt like they understood the challenges that growing companies face.”
Shortly after, Parallo and i2i Logic began working together, kicked off by a Discovery Workshop.
“That was good,” says Simon. “We went through to understand what the infrastructure looked like, what we could do to cut costs and make it more secure. It was a stocktake.”
Those plans were brought to fruition through close collaboration and weekly status meetings.
“Over the past year, we’ve undertaken a range of reviews across security, and virtual machine utilisation, making sure we can right-size everything. We’ve established alerts and monitoring to get a consistent approach across everything,” he explains.
That initial stage was about getting the basics of infrastructure management right, and the next stage was to secure the environment.
Peace of mind - monitoring and expertise
That level of monitoring and support has taken a load off.
“From a business perspective, there’s a level of peace of mind that they’re sitting there keeping an eye on things. They have their systems and alerts set up and going. We’re too small to hire someone full-time and this way we have a wider range of expertise.”
Simon says that even if i2i Logic was big enough to hire a full-time person, it wouldn’t replace Parallo.
“It’s somewhere to go to when I have a question. I haven’t had a situation where someone didn’t know how to resolve the issue in Azure. That’s always been good,” he explains.
The support to grow
For Simon, it’s a simple equation – to grow, he needs smart people to build and run systems.
“Parallo helps with both of those,” he says.
Behind Parallo’s expertise is something perhaps just as important – how easy it is to work with.
“Parallo is easy-going as a company. The ChatOps are chatty and informal, but they do back it up with a fair bit of expertise. They’re good people, easy to work with and good expertise,” says Simon.