Over 12 months, Parallo helped ZenContract reduce infrastructure costs by 45% and increase security. With a secure, efficient and scalable cloud environment, the company can focus on what’s most important – finding new customers.
“The gateway to contract paradise”
Good contract management is the foundation of any successful business partnership. ZenContract provides a cloud-based contract management tool that covers the entire contract lifecycle. The tool equals less contract chaos for its clients, so they can focus on core activities instead.
“I know through experience that contracts are the lifeblood of every MSP’s monthly recurring revenue stream, and business owners simply work too hard to win contracts in the first place for them not to be managed and maximised,” says CEO and co-founder Greg Sharp.
One company – unlimited expertise
Greg knows first-hand the value of working with an MSP – he built and sold an MSP before founding ZenContract. From the outset, he prioritised finding an experienced cloud management service provider.
Like many SaaS companies, ZenContract’s biggest challenge during its growth phase is limited internal resources. Those resources are focused where they should be – on development and sales. But monitoring and optimising its cloud infrastructure was a big part of setting the company up to scale.
Greg leaned on his connections in the industry to find the right cloud management and optimisation partner. Parallo’s depth of skill and experience stood out.
- “With Parallo, you get the knowledge economy of 40 people instead of one, and they’re consistently being up-skilled. For a start-up, that’s so much more cost-effective than hiring someone internally,” Greg says.
Review, refine, monitor
Parallo’s first step with ZenContract involved conducting an Azure Well-Architectured Review of the company’s cloud environment. From that review, Parallo recommended ways ZenContract could optimise its cloud architecture to make it more secure and efficient.
After discussing the suggestions, Parallo’s Azure cloud-managed services team was tasked with five priority jobs within two specific pillars – cost optimisation and security.
45% reduction in infrastructure costs
Over 12 months, Parallo optimised ZenContract’s infrastructure to support its growth goals while looking for ways to reduce costs.
“In January 2023, the company was spending around $200 per day,” explains Parallo Cloud Services Team Lead. “By September, that number had decreased by 45%.”
It’s a win-win situation, Greg says. The company not only saves money, but it now has resources that can go towards optimising other important business areas.
“Doing the cost optimisation work allowed us to reallocate resources to security,” Greg explains. “It gives us peace of mind that, if something does go wrong, we’ve got a plan – your customers care just as much about how you respond in those scenarios.”
Here’s what was involved in achieving that 45% cost reduction:
Identified overspend on storage: optimised back-ups to avoid duplicating data and implemented a lifecycle policy to delete old and unused data.Analysed and deleted old, unused resources: including VPN gateways and virtual machines.
Shifted to time-based Azure reserved instances: instead of paying monthly.
On top of all that, ZenContract added additional security services that will help with backup and disaster recovery, including moving to geo-redundant architecture to avoid application downtime.
With 100 customers worldwide (and quickly growing), this was a big win.
On track to reach growth targets
For ZenContract to hit the 500-customer milestone, its infrastructure must be secure, highly available and scalable. Greg is confident that with Parallo’s support, it’s in the best position to achieve that goal.
“This year is all about scaling up,” says Greg. “We want to add more integrations, write our own API, roll out a second revenue stream, and increase our reach.”
ZenContract will continue to work with Parallo as it moves through the next stages of growth. Monthly check-ins are a chance to review progress reports and assess any changes in ZenContract’s environment together.
“We use machine learning to look at spend over time,” Parallo’s Cloud Services Team Lead explains. “If there are any unexpected spikes in spend, we know straight away. We can dig into why that’s happening and adjust the plan to avoid that cost.”
As ZenContract scales and reaches that 500-customer holy grail, Parallo will continue to hunt out new cost saving opportunities.
“With Parallo’s support, we can focus on doing that and know that our cloud environment is constantly monitored and optimised.”
Is your cloud environment performing at its best? If you’re not sure, get in touch with the Parallo team today.
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