Discover Kirkland’s cloud migration story and success
Let’s talk about a cloud migration success story. Kirkland was founded in 1966 and is a purveyor of home décor and related goods. Kirkland had a full-blown, hosted system to run 400+ stores and a thriving online retail presence. So why the move?
Necessity created the perfect storm for Kirkland to spread its wings and discover the benefits of cloud computing, because their service provider was shuttering its data center and would no longer provide hosting and IT services.
Kirkland struck out to find a new business partnership where they could take advantage of modern IT infrastructure in the cloud. CloudHesive became that partner and enabled Kirkland to move into the modern age of cloud computing. CloudHesive managed services experience and expertise helped Kirkland overcome past IT challenges and save money while improving overall performance.
CloudHesive is a managed services provider with a wealth of expertise in AWS cloud. AWS is the industry-leading cloud IT solution with built-in tools to solve all your business challenges. CloudHesive is a preferred AWS solutions provider. By selecting CloudHesive, Kirkland benefits from the experience and deep understanding of building an effective, stable, and secure cloud solution for the long term.
This guide describes how Kirkland leveraged their partnership with CloudHesive to successfully move their business into the cloud.
Key takeaways:
- Strategic business partnerships like Kirkland and CloudHesive are critical to addressing IT needs and challenges.
- Successful cloud migrations help demonstrate the power of data-driven assessments in reducing downtime and improving performance.
- Learn from the Kirkland-CloudHesive collaboration success story and use it to plan your successful cloud migration with an experienced strategic business partner.
History and IT challenges
Kirkland is a leader in the home décor and gifts retailing space. Kirkland includes 434 stores in 37 states and a full-service e-commerce site under www.kirklands.com. Kirkland sells a broad selection of merchandise, from framed art to accent rugs, garden accessories, and gifts. Kirkland’s has built a strong core of products and market channels to develop and sustain a growing business.
Kirkland’s infrastructure relied on a legacy Oracle Commerce Platform scheduled for shutdown. One consistent problem with legacy infrastructure is a lack of comprehensive documentation. Left with little to move forward, Kirkland opted to use Amazon Web Services. The problem is without documentation and history, they need help migrating their legacy IT infrastructure to a modern cloud services provider.
Kirkland needed a business partner with experience managing legacy systems and a tightly integrated system of third-party applications, data, security, and AWS. The migration must be swift, effective, and keep the retail systems up and running with as little downtime as possible.
Choosing CloudHesive as a strategic partner
When Oracle dropped Kirkland’s managed hosting, Kirkland contacted CloudHesive based on their reputation as an AWS premier partner. Why choose CloudHesive from so many competitors? Reputation and expertise.
CloudHesive holds a positive reputation as a credible and service-orientated AWS provider with expertise in security and e-commerce solutions. CloudHesive provides end-to-end managed services to make IT a positive, productive, and cost-effective experience.
CloudHesive partnership benefits include:
- Top-of-the-line network security
- Reduced downtime during migrations
- Migrating legacy systems to the modern AWS cloud
- Clear communication
- Investment in your business and the strength of your IT infrastructure
Modern businesses need the multiple security layers offered by cloud providers like AWS. Effective and continuous network security protects systems from phishing, malware, data breaches and helps manage attacks. Solid security also means less downtime.
Downtime from preventable security issues wastes time, resources, and money. The AWS cloud helps businesses avoid downtime from security incidents, as well as from poor server management. With constant monitoring and incident management tools, AWS can help keep any network monitored, managed, and secured.
Effective partners manage challenges
How does a service provider like CloudHesive create strong business partnerships? By managing and overcoming IT challenges. The Kirkland project included migrating environments supporting development, quality assurance, staging, and production. Kirkland used a common 4-tier architecture to provide failover capacity in case issues were found in production.
CloudHesive started the Kirkland project by initially assessing the existing IT architecture, environment, and security protocols. With cooperation from Oracle’s professional services team, CloudHesive designed a full migration strategy, moving Kirkland out of Oracle and onto AWS. The strategy was communicated between CloudHesive and Kirkland.
The CloudHesive team migrated Kirkland’s infrastructure and data into AWS in under 90 days. CloudHesive security experts deployed state-of-the-art AWS security monitoring and controls during the migration.
Kirkland’s system ran on AWS successfully without significant interruption or network downtime. The Kirkland team continues to appreciate the high level of service provided through CloudHesive managed services.
Analyzing the move
Once a successful migration is completed, is the honeymoon over? The Kirkland project was a resounding success. As a final bonus, CloudHesive helped Kirkland identify additional AWS tools and integrations to automate business processes, analyze data in real-time, and add efficiencies to workflows, all in the name of full modernization in AWS.
Kirkland can leverage their business relationship with CloudHesive and ensure they get the most from their managed services. With AWS, Kirkland can now perform data-driven assessments of performance and productivity improvements since the migration.
Business metrics can also provide information on customer service levels and productivity. Metrics can enable businesses like Kirkland to leverage their real business data to make informed business decisions.
Are you ready for a successful cloud migration?
For most companies, a cloud migration happens once. However, it’s like pouring the foundation of a house. The migration must be successful for anything else to be built around it. Cloud migration can be a once-in-a-lifetime necessity and that’s a huge challenge. It’s hard to develop the experience to perform successful cloud migrations when they’re only done once.
CloudHesive is an MSP that specializes in doing cloud migrations. We help businesses worldwide achieve scalability and efficiency by migrating to the AWS cloud. CloudHesive starts the migration process by performing accurate and detailed IT infrastructure and needs assessments. Next, a full strategy or plan is created utilizing the expertise of AWS architects and experienced AWS engineers.
CloudHesive specialists represent a global team with 24/7 support and continuous security monitoring. With CloudHesive, you get secure, compliant, risk-averse cloud migration and the best AWS tools available.
Like the Kirkland project, your cloud migration can be a success. Talk to our experts and get an assessment. Let us help you move forward securely and successfully.
As an Amazon Managed Services partner and Amazon Premier Partner, CloudHesive helps any organization experience the benefits and power of the AWS cloud system.
See what other customers say in other case studies, including Kirkland, available from CloudHesive.
