L-R: Andre Morgan, Fabio Carvana and Adam Durbin (CMD Solutions)
CMD Solutions has given Australian comparison site Finder the thumbs up to take its data centre architecture into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
The Sydney-based cloud workload and automation specialist was drafted in to audit and verify Finder’s AWS architecture plan, comparing it against best practises in the market.
Finder had already built the model with help from AWS’ global cloud infrastructure team but brought in CMD to check its solution and to help upskill the platform ahead of a full migration.
“CMD helped us build a well architected program, compare best practises, and finally to see how well we could integrate it all together,” Joe Waller, chief product and technology officer at Finder, explained.
Four years ago, Finder’s entire infrastructure was housed in a data centre, but is now wholly cloud based on both AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
As part of a cloud acceleration drive amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the site was able to build its Finder app on Amazon Elastic Compute (EC2), which provides re-sizable capacity in the cloud.
AWS is now also enabling Finder to deliver data applications to global customers through AWS CloudFront, which has 200 points of presence around the world and delivers content with a lower latency.
Alongside AWS, Finder also turned to GCP both for its G Suite workload offering and its BigQuery analytics services.
Meanwhile, to boost its content offering, Finder also turned to Sydney-based global digital agency Human Made to re-vamp its WordPress back-end.
According to Waller, the move to AWS and GCP marks a stark contrast from his previous role at a UK company whereby everything was built into Oracle.
“With Oracle, we had everything built on it and then they changed their pricing model. With a hybrid model, we have much better flexibility in case this would happen again, though I think it’s unlikely. But let’s say I learnt from that experience,” he said.
He added that turning to AWS in particular allowed Finder to scale up in new markets faster and reinvent how it brings new services to customers.
