Arlington Economic Development (AED), like many companies and municipalities, had been utilizing a physical hosted server solution to host their multiple websites for a number of years. Although this solution has fulfilled their needs over the years, we began discussing with them the option of moving their site hosting to the cloud. They were reaching a crossroads to either replace or upgrade their existing hardware or move it to a hosted solution.
WTI worked with their team to identify the performance and economic advantages or disadvantages to each alternative. Due to issues with the existing physical server, we needed to evaluate, assess and make recommendations on the best solution for their needs. We quickly recognized that a quick-fix solution of upgrading memory on their physical server was relatively expensive for the anticipated gain. We knew that we needed to move to a new hosting solution soon however due to the complexity of legacy and new applications, we expected the move could take some time and would most likely need to be redone in a few of years.
After a review and assessment of the practicality, costs, and performance of each solution, we chose to migrate their websites to a cloud server. This solution provided us greater flexibility and helped to lessen issues associated with accommodating future needs. It also allowed us to very specifically design the server to both meet AED’s performance needs while staying within their constrained budget.
The migration went smoothly and without incident. AED took the opportunity of the migration to also review their content and chose to move only what was still relevant to the new hosting platform. The new cloud based server performs significantly better than the old server and virtually all of the reboots and additional server monitoring have stopped. Since the move, we have begun discussing with AED a complete redesign of their AED main site.