Case Study: Professional Services Firm Improves Healthcare Client’s Cloud Migration Efforts
Redjack gives Terrain Insights, a PwC product, the data that can help provide clients visibility into their network
PwC’s purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. PwC is a network of firms in 151 countries with over 360,000 people who are committed to delivering quality assurance, advisory, and tax services. Terrain Insights, a PwC product, is a scalable software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that can give PwC clients real-time visibility into their IT network and assets.
End Customer Challenge: Compliance & Visibility
Migrating to the cloud can be challenging for several reasons. On a fundamental level, the complexity of the existing IT environment often makes it difficult to transition to a cloud-based environment seamlessly.
Concerns about data security, regulatory compliance, and the need to maintain uptime during the migration process add additional dimensions to this complexity.
Overall, the multifaceted nature of cloud migration demands careful planning, resource allocation, and strategic alignment with business objectives to overcome these challenges.
In this case, a large healthcare provider engaged PwC to use their cloud migration factory model and Terrain Insights to assist in their cloud migration readiness and planning effort.
This project involved several key tasks for PwC, including the collection and evaluation of the client’s application and infrastructure data, the disposition of over 500 business applications, and the development of a Microsoft Azure landing zone design to support the migrated assets from the existing data center environment.
Alliance Partner Challenge: Network Discovery
Network discovery can be challenging because network infrastructures can be complex and heterogeneous, consisting of various devices, systems, and protocols across different physical and virtual environments. This diversity can make it difficult to achieve holistic visibility and understanding of the overall network.
To successfully complete this project, Terrain Insights, a PwC product, needed a network discovery solution that met specific criteria.
First and foremost, the solution had to be non-disruptive to the client’s network, facilitating seamless operations during the discovery process.
Scalability was important, requiring a solution capable of handling the complexities and volume of very large enterprise networks without sacrificing performance.
Visibility was another essential requirement, necessitating a solution that could provide a near real-time view of assets that accounted for daily changes within the network.
Finally, they needed a solution that could provide holistic coverage across on-premises, virtual, and cloud environments to create a holistic view across the network’s landscape.
Solution: Terrain Insights Enabled by Redjack
The Terrain Insights team opted to collaborate with Redjack to help complete this project due to the alignment of Redjack’s solution with their requirements. Built for the enterprise, Redjack is massively scalable, quick to deploy, has a minimal footprint, and supports complex and evolving hybrid environments.
Particularly, Terrain Insights chose the Redjack solution because its sensors were able to passively collect network telemetry data and did not require the customer to install discovery agents on their endpoints. Moreover, it did not execute active network scans that could potentially disrupt network performance, facilitating seamless operations throughout the discovery process.
PwC presented their client with the benefits of Terrain Insights. Specifically, they showcased Terrain Insight’s ability to help discover assets across their enterprise and determine asset type and lifecycle information. These capabilities are enabled by Redjack sensors which can dynamically discover changes in the environment and update the asset inventory in real time, covering both internal and external assets whether in the cloud, on-premises, or containers.
Business Results
Terrain Insights, a PwC product, was used as the primary discovery tool for the client’s cloud migration project. It was augmented with supplemental data from Tanium and other software industry leaders to help perform the application and infrastructure discovery and dependency mapping.
Terrain Insights combined automation and analytics along with the collection of network communication data from Redjack sensors to help establish a current view of business services, application interrelationships, and underlying compute assets that can support them.
As a result, the team from PwC was able to perform the following:
217,355 named assets were observed in the client’s environment
2,909 applications were mapped
8,959 systems were assigned to applications
19,792 app-to-app communication interfaces (potential dependencies) were observed
This project’s successful implementation has resulted in cost savings and boosted customer productivity. The significant (300%) enhancement in visibility within their environment has empowered them to make more informed decisions and helped decrease reliance on traditional tribal knowledge.
Remarkably, these improvements were achieved with minimal disruption to the client’s network infrastructure.
Terrain Insights continues to collaborate with Redjack as a data source in future engagements.
Conclusion
The Alliance Partnership between PwC and Redjack has significantly enhanced the cloud migration efforts of PwC’s client, a large healthcare provider. Leveraging the Redjack cyber resilience platform’s sensors, PwC was able to collect and evaluate vast amounts of data, enabling them to provide their client with real-time visibility into their IT network and assets.
With over 217,000 assets observed and nearly 3,000 applications mapped, PwC helped empower their client to make informed decisions and streamline their cloud migration process, resulting in cost savings, increased productivity, and a 300% growth in visibility.
Moving forward, PwC remains committed to utilizing Redjack’s technology as a trusted data source in their future engagements for continued success and efficiency in their projects.
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