Cloud Optimization – AFS Dealers

Client Overview

AFS Dealer Services offered a hosted dealer management system aimed at small car dealerships. Their system provided everything required to buy or lease a vehicle, collect payments, message with customers, and more. The system was built on a low-code tool.

Challenge

Rick Reeves has been helping used car dealerships offer better loan financing for more than 25 years with his application offerings. In 2017 he partnered up with a long time collaborator to start a new company, AFS Dealer Services. From the beginning, Rick knew that web hosting was an integral part of his business.

As AFS grew they quickly required more space and reliability than their original Des Moines, Iowa hosting partner could provide. They decided to partner with a multibillion-dollar managed cloud computing company, but despite paying $25,000 per month for “White Glove” level service, the issues started to mount.

For more than a year, AFS struggled with network blackouts and constant troubleshooting calls. Users were upset with the system and it prevented their customers from operating their businesses.

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“Network reliability was a constant issue which meant that continuity of service to our customers was at serious risk.”

Solution

AFS needed to be certain that their systems were going to be reliable, scalable, and cost-controlled.

We started by auditing the existing infrastructure. Throughout, we found various misconfigurations and improper use that were leading to network instability. Overall, there was a lack of visibility into what problems were occurring and why.

After the audit we conducted a gap analysis to determine what could be done. We reviewed these items with the AFS team with details regarding what everything meant, how it could be used, and the impact it would have on their software.

Upon reaching agreement on what should be done, we went to work to come up with a plan to implement. We implemented the plan to create a more stable deployment in Azure while reducing costs substantially.