Partner Success with AWS / Software & Internet / United Kingdom
Bytes Helps Ramtech Migrate WiSE Security Platform to Improve Reliability Using AWS
0%
downtime for infrastructure to date after migration
Greater
system reliability and less idle time for service engineers
Seamless
scalability through serverless archive system
Improved
ability to draw insights from data
Overview
Ramtech re-platformed its wireless security monitoring platform WiSE on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to improve reliability, scalability, and reduce maintenance overheads. The company worked with UK-based AWS Partner Bytes to migrate the platform using Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and AWS Glue, which has resulted in zero downtime, improved the efficiency of its staff, and provides scalability on demand.
Ramtech Seeks Alternative to High-Maintenance Data Center
Founded in 1990 in Nottingham, UK, Ramtech is a specialist in wireless communications, providing fire detection and security systems for the construction and industrial sectors respectively. It has customers in over 30 countries and employs over 70 people across the UK, Europe, and North America. One of the company’s products is an application called WiSE—a physical security alarm system that protects tens of thousands of holiday park homes throughout the UK. When an alarm sensor is triggered, the system alerts park security, who can respond quickly, providing an invaluable service to the holiday home owners.
The WiSE platform and its associated databases were running on a third-party data center, which was causing management and maintenance problems. Its hardware was nearing end of life, scaling was slow and required capital expenditure to update, and its technical teams spent too much time troubleshooting. “We needed a near-zero-downtime platform so we could sell it to our customers guaranteeing a high SLA,” says Dale Howard, IT manager at Ramtech. “We were wasting too many resources sending engineers to our data center every time a hard drive was full or a database needed updating.”
Ramtech started developing a plan to transform the infrastructure hosting WiSE. The end goal was to re-platform WiSE so it would be more reliable, scale easily, and free up the Ramtech IT team from the burden of maintaining hardware. Another important objective was to improve its backup and disaster recovery plans. After a thorough investigation, the company decided to migrate the WiSE platform to AWS and recruited the help of AWS Partner Bytes.
Our new archive system uses Amazon S3 and effectively has infinite capacity—we can just keep adding data to it. Previously when our archive server got close to full, our engineers would have to manually make space by moving data and applications to alternative storage areas.”
Dale Howard
IT Manager at Ramtech
Migration Improves Reliability and Upgrades Business Continuity Plans
The teams from Bytes and Ramtech completed the discovery phase in April 2023 and finalized the technical details to complete the WiSE platform migration. “It was time consuming because we had lots of internal software to upgrade and prepare,” says Howard. “We wanted to ensure there would be no downtime when we made the switch, and it really helped that Bytes are AWS experts.”
The migration was completed in 5 months. All the databases attached to WiSE were transferred using Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, which allows you to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud with just a few clicks. For general storage needs, it uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)—object storage built to retrieve any amount of data from anywhere.
The WiSE platform is more reliable and simple to scale since the migration to AWS. Greater reliability has also improved the productivity of Ramtech’s field service engineers, who previously would not be able to work when the system was unavailable. “If WiSE is down, our service team of ten engineers can’t make repairs or onboard new customers,” says Howard. “Since migrating to AWS, we’ve had zero downtime, so our customers remain protected, the service team can do its job, and we don’t lose revenue.”
Improvements to Business Continuity and an Eye on IoT and AI
One major concern for Ramtech was its backup and disaster recovery system. Bytes replaced Ramtech’s physical archive server by collecting new data using AWS Glue, which can discover, prepare, and integrate all of an organization’s data at any scale. To query archive data, Bytes uses Amazon Athena, a serverless, interactive analytics service. The archive was previously stored in a database but is now stored in CSV format on Amazon S3. “Our new archive system uses Amazon S3 and effectively has infinite capacity—we can just keep adding data to it,” says Howard. “Previously when our archive server got close to full, our engineers would have to manually make space by moving data and applications to alternative storage areas.”
Ramtech completed its migration project at the end of 2023 and praised Bytes’ handling of the migration. “The project manager provided by Bytes oversaw the project from end to end,” says Howard. “Bytes understood our needs and would offer guidance and different options to solve our problems.”
The company is already looking at how it can build on its new agile and flexible infrastructure. The company has been training its IT team to improve their technical AWS skills and is investigating how to make better use of the data it collects. “We already have discovery projects looking into how technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Internet of Things can be used to provide more value to the business,” says Howard. “We’re looking to expand our capabilities and expect to be using a lot more AWS services in the future.”
About Ramtech
UK-based Ramtech is a specialist in wireless communications. Founded in 1990 in Nottingham, UK, it started by providing wireless security systems. The company now has customers in over 30 countries and employs over 70 people across the UK, Europe, and North America.
About AWS Partner Bytes
Bytes specializes in digital transformation, cloud governance, and managed/support services for AWS customers. Bytes’ breadth of insight and experience has helped hundreds of companies maximize their investment in AWS whilst keeping costs as low as possible.
AWS Services Used
Amazon S3
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS manages complex and time-consuming administrative tasks such as PostgreSQL software installation and upgrades, storage management, replication for high availability and read throughput, and backups for disaster recovery. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL gives you access to the capabilities of the familiar PostgreSQL database engine.
AWS Glue
AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that makes it easier to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources for analytics, machine learning (ML), and application development.
Learn more »
Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena is a serverless, interactive analytics service built on open-source frameworks, supporting open-table and file formats. Athena provides a simplified, flexible way to analyze petabytes of data where it lives.
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