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Customer Stories

XTEK Opts for Sovereign Compute-as-a-Service

October 2, 2020

A leader in the design, production and retail of high-quality front-line combatant products, XTEK has been at the forefront of Australia’s Homeland Security efforts for some 40 years. 

Providing in-house technology solutions and exclusive reseller partnerships, XTEK works with government defence and law enforcement agencies and military and space organisations.

Challenge

With the business expanding and operation of two geographically distant locations XTEK has leveraged the flexibility of digital and virtualised technologies – particularly in the last 12 months. But as the Covid-19 pandemic crisis intensified, particularly the need to enable a workforce to operate securely from home, the urgency to bolster the XTEK digital infrastructure accelerated.

To assure business continuity, XTEK decided it wanted a cloud-based solution – one that met the privacy and security standards of the defence industry. Cognisant of the potential risks posed by extra-territorial jurisdictional intervention, XTEK wanted assurance that its data (including customer data, metadata, administrative and derived analytics data) would always remain in Australia.

The ability to seamlessly transition to AUCloud’s CaaS was critical to XTEK’s ability to support a remote workforce during the Covid-19 lockdown period. We had been considering a move to the cloud anyway but given the need to rapidly provision whole of business work from home arrangements it made sense to do it sooner rather than later.

Bob Quodling
Chief Operating Officer, XTEK

Solution

While the primary focus was on supporting internal operations and business continuity, XTEK acutely understood the risks associated with conducting business online, including the need to secure its networks and data. AUCloud’s sovereign Computeas-a-Service (CaaS) ticked all the boxes.

IRAP certified to the PROTECTED level controls of the Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Information Security Manual (ISM), AUCloud’s CaaS provides XTEK a reliable and secure Infrastructure-as-a-Service option, comparable to the functionality and scale of a service typically associated with global cloud offerings.

With a range of VM sizes, storage and connectivity options, AUCloud’s CaaS enables XTEK to build their cloud infrastructure in minutes, right size their capacity and scale on demand to meet their needs. The ability to quickly deploy infrastructure to support staff working remotely using the AUCloud API Gateway, provides XTEK with increased control, flexibility and confidence that business continuity is assured.

The ability for XTEK to bring their own firewall to support common configuration across all their sites provided the added benefit of reducing the ongoing maintenance burden for XTEK – a considerable cost and time saving.

Outcomes

Deploying AUCloud’s CaaS enabled XTEK to remain fully operational during Covid-19 restrictions. Essential business services, now operated from the Cloud, delivered the business continuity that would not otherwise have been possible under a work from home scenario. Alternative work arrangements such as staggering employee working hours, rotations and lay-offs were avoided.

The reliability and affordability of the AUCloud CaaS has also provided the basis for ongoing work from home flexibility, including post Covid. Leveraging the expertise and skills of AUCloud staff throughout the process, supported by outstanding customer support, has made the transition to CaaS near seamless.

A key benefit of genuine cloud IaaS is the ability to provision services quickly – to right size and then scale as required. XTEK is a great example of how AUCloud’s sovereign cloud services provide customers with the flexibility to build what they need, when they need it, always with confidence they have complete control – but that we’re here to help if they need it.

AUCloud

Benefits

Industrial strength capacity for the whole business to work remotely, including across different State based facilities

Business continuity and operational effectiveness when other companies closed their doors or imposed working restrictions as a result of Covid-19

Enhanced security: AUCloud provides specialised security features that are not affordable for smaller businesses

Reliability of service and ability to scale as XTEK requirements grow

XTEK only pays for what it uses with complete transparency of pricing and billing

Assurance that all XTEK data, including commercially sensitive data remains in Australia

Reduced maintenance costs because XTEK had the ability to integrate its own firewall into the implemented solution

XTEK CaaS CASE STUDY

Starter Plan

Spacing

N/A

Expandable RAM

Fixed Memory – 1GB

Memory Cache

512 MB

Number of Visits

15000

SSL Certificate

N/A

CDN

N/A

Priority Support

SLA – 48 hours

CloudCloud ServicesCovid 19GovernmentSecurity
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